Smith v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
161 U.S. 85 · 1896
Citation profile
15 federal appellate · 19 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 41 later decisions (6 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2016 · most notably Carson v. Polley (1982), Andersen v. United States (1898)
15 federal appellate · 19 state decisions — followed in 10 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 Starr v. United States · Hicks v. United States · Allison v. United States · Wiggins v. People
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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[U]pon principle, and by the weight of authority, evidence that the deceased was a larger and more powerful man than the defendant, as well as evidence that the deceased had the general reputation of being a quarrelsome and dangerous person, was competent, especially if his character in this respect was known to defendant, which there was evidence in this case tending to show. [Emphasis added.]”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Griffin · State v. Montoya
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.