Sparf v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
156 U.S. 51 · 1895
Citation profile
574 federal appellate · 51 district · 443 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,368 later decisions (106 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera (1966), Arizona v. Fulminante (1991)
574 federal appellate · 51 district · 443 state decisions — followed in 48 states
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 Hopt v. People of the Territory of Utah · Logan v. United States · Mutual Life Ins Co of New York v. Hillmon · 'The Ku-Klux Cases' Yarbrough
Cited together with Berra v. United States · Stevenson v. United States · Sansone v. United States · Horning v. District of Columbia · In the Matter of Samuel Winship
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 1,368 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“To instruct the jury in a criminal case that the defendant cannot properly be convicted of a crime less than that charged, or to refuse to instruct them in respect to the lesser offenses that might, under some circumstances, be included in the one so charged there being no evidence whatever upon which any verdict could be properly returned except one of guilty or one of not guilty of the particular offense charged is not error; for the instructing or refusing to instruct, under the circumstances named, rests upon legal principles or presumptions which it is the province of the court to declare for the guidance of the jury. In the case supposed the court is as clearly in the exercise of its legitimate functions, as it is when ruling that particular evidence offered is not competent, or that evidence once admitted shall be stricken out and not be considered by the jury, or when it withdraws from the jury all proof of confessions by the accused upon the ground that such confessions, not having been made freely and voluntarily, are inadmissible under the law as evidence against the accused.”
51 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““A verdict of guilty of an offense less than the one charged would have been in flagrant disregard of all the proof, and in violation by the jury of their obligation to render a true verdict. There was an entire absence of evidence upon which to rest a verdict of guilty of manslaughter or of simple assault. A verdict of that kind would have been the exercise by the jury of the power to commute the. punishment for an offense actually committed, and thus impose a punishment different from that prescribed by law.””
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“I do not consider it necessary, gentlemen, to explain [manslaughter] further, for if a felonious homicide has been committed, of which you are to be the judges from the proof, there is nothing in this case to reduce it below the grade of murder. In other words, it may be in the power of the jury, under the indictment by which these defendants are accused and tried, of finding them guilty of a less crime than murder, to wit, manslaughter, or an attempt to commit murder; yet, as I have said in this case, if a felonious homicide has been committed at all, of which I repeat you are the judges, there is nothing to reduce it below the grade of murder.”
3 later decisions 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.