United States v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis
151 U.S. 577 · 1894
Citation profile
56 federal appellate · 10 district · 23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 134 later decisions (10 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2017 · most notably Mescalero Apache Tribe v. Jones (1973), Donnelly v. United States (1913)
56 federal appellate · 10 district · 23 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on United States v. Kagama · United States v. George Wilson · Beecher v. Wetherby · Cooper v. Roberts
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 134 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It was therefore an unalterable condition of the admission, obligatory upon the United States, that section 16 in every township of the public lands in the state, which had not been sold or otherwise. disposed of, should be granted to the state for the use of schools. It matters not whether the words of the compact be considered as merely promissory on the part of the United States, and constituting only a pledge of a grant in future, or as operating to transfer the title to the state upon her acceptance of the propositions as soon as the sections could be afterwards identified by the public surveys. In either case, the lands which might be embraced within those sections were appropriated to the state. They were withdrawn from any other disposition, and set apart from the public domain, so that no subsequent law authorizing a sale of it could be construed to embrace them, although they were not specially excepted. All that afterwards remained for the United States to do with respect to them, and all that could be legally done under the compact, was to identify the sections by appropriate surveys; or if any further assurance of title was required, to provide for the execution of proper instruments to transfer the naked fee, or to adopt such further legislation as would accomplish that result. They could not be diverted from their appropriation to the State.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Whatever right the State of Wisconsin acquired by the enabling act to the sixteenth section was subordinate to this right of occupancy for which the Indians stipulated and which the United States recognized. The general rule established by the land department in reference to the school lands in the different states is that the title to them vests in the several states in which the land is situated, subject to any prior right of occupation by the Indians or others which the government had stipulated to recognize.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“That where the fee is in the United States at the date of survey, and the land is so incumbered that full and complete title and right of possession cannot then vest in the state, the state may, if it so desires, elect to take equivalent lands in fulfillment of the compact, or it may wait until the right and title of possession unite in the government, and then satisfy its grant by taking the lands specifically granted.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.