Southern Pac Co v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

23 federal appellate · 43 district · 192 state decisions

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 516 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““This general rule is demanded by the very object for which civil courts have been established, which is to secure the peace and repose of society by the settlement of matters capable of judicial determination. Its enforcement is essential to the maintenance of social order; for the aid of judicial tribunals would not be invoked for the vindication of rights of person and property, if, as between parties and their privies, conclusiveness did not attend the judgments of such tribunals in respect of all matters properly put in issue and actually determined by them.””

   39 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. National Farmers Union Property & Casualty Co. v. Fisher · Norton v. House of Mercy of New York

2. ““It was distinctly adjudged in the former oases, as between the government and the Southern Pacific Railroad Company ( 146 U. S. 570 , 596, 13 Sup. Ct. 152 , 36 L. Ed. 1091 ), that the maps filed in 1872 sufficiently identified the lands granted to the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company on the contemplated line between the Colorado river and San Buenaventura, on the Pacific Coast, although, for want of authority in that company to construct a railroad to San Francisco, they did not secure to the company any lands north of San Buenaventura; that is, those maps were directly adjudged to be maps adequately fixing or locating the line of the road under the act of 1866. The records of those cases having been introduced in the present suit, there is no room for doubt — if those records are competent evidence — as to what was in issue and what was adjudged "in the former eases. The maps which in this case are relied upon by the United States as rnapé of definite location, and which the Southern Pacific Railroad Company denies to be of that character, are the identical maps which the government relied on in the former cases, and the same which that company referred to and made part of its answer in the former litigation, and which were adjudged by this court, in conformity with the contention of the government, to be valid maps of definite location, the acceptance of which made it impossible for the Southern Pacific Railroad Company to acquire any interest in any lands granted to th”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Southern Pac. R.

3. ““It is not denied, as a general mle, that a fact which has been directly tried and decided by a court of competent jurisdiction cannot be contested again between the same parties, in the same or any other court. Hence a verdict and judgment of a court of record or a decree in chancery, although not binding on strangers, puts an end to all further controversy concerning the points thus decided between the parties to such suits. In this there is and ought to be no difference between a verdict and judgment in a court of common law and a decree of a court of equity. They both stand on the same footing, and may be offered in (evidence under the same limitations, and it would be difficult to assign a reason why it should be otherwise. The rule has found its way into every system of jurisprudence, not only from its obvious fitness and propriety, but because without it an end could never be put to litigation. It is therefore not confined, in England or in this country, to judgments of the same court, or to the decisions of courts of concurrent jurisdiction, but extends to matters litigated before competent tribunals in foreign countries.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Norton v. House of Mercy of New York