Sentell v. New Orleans & Carrollton R. Co.’s Empirical Analysis
166 U.S. 698 · 1897
Citation profile
40 federal appellate · 14 district · 194 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 302 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2024 · most notably Henning Jacobson v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1905), State v. Anderson (1991)
40 federal appellate · 14 district · 194 state decisions — followed in 36 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 Lawton v. Steele · Bowditch v. Boston · Woolf v. Chalker · Blair v. Forehand
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 302 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[P]roperty in dogs is of an imperfect or qualified nature, and [ ] they stand, as it were, between animals ferae naturae, in which until killed or subdued, there is no property, and domestic animals, in which the right of property is perfect and complete.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Even if it were assumed that dogs are property in the fullest sense of the word, they would still be subject to the police power of the State, and might be destroyed or otherwise dealt with, as in the judgment of the legislature is necessary for the protection of its citizens.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Acting upon the principle that there is but a qualified property in [dogs], and that, while private interests require that the valuable ones shall be protected, public interests demand that the worthless shall be exterminated, they have, from time immemorial, been considered as holding their lives at the will of the legislature, and properly falling within the police powers of the several states.... Even if it were assumed that dogs are property in the fullest sense of the word, they would still be subject to the police power of the state, and might be destroyed or otherwise dealt with, as in the judgment of the legislature is necessary for the protection of its citizens.”
4 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.