Spalding v. Vilas’s Empirical Analysis
161 U.S. 483 · 1896
Citation profile
452 federal appellate · 156 district · 185 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,074 later decisions (47 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2025 · most notably Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982), Scheuer v. Rhodes (1974)
452 federal appellate · 156 district · 185 state decisions — followed in 37 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 Bradley v. Fisher · Randall v. Brigham · Yates v. Lansing
Cited together with Barr v. Matteo · Butz v. Economou · Pierson v. Ray · Scheuer v. Rhodes · Gregoire v. Biddle
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 1,074 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“manifestly or palpably beyond his authority,”
36 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“not for the protection or benefit of a malicious or corrupt judge, but for the benefit of the public, whose interest it is that the judges should be at liberty to exercise their functions with independence and without fear of consequences.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“maintained because of the allegation that what the officer did was done maliciously?”
2 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.