Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward’s Empirical Analysis
17 U.S. 518 · 1819
Citation profile
169 federal appellate · 95 district · 758 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,440 later decisions (133 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Sierra Club v. Morton (1972), Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority (1936)
169 federal appellate · 95 district · 758 state decisions — followed in 50 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 Calder et Wife, v. Bull et Wife. · Fletcher v. Peck · Newton v. Commissioners · New Jersey v. Wilson
Cited together with Home Building & Loan Ass'n v. Blaisdell · Fletcher v. Peck · City of Trenton v. New Jersey · United States Trust Company of New York v. New Jersey · Erie Co v. Tompkins
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 1,440 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.”
19 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““A law, which hears before it condemns; which proceeds upon inquiry, and renders judgment only after trial.” Dartmouth College Case, 4 Wheat. 518 , 4 L. Ed. 629 .”
11 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. In re Cook · Soto v. United States““When, then, the argument assumes, that because the charity is public, the corporation is public, it manifestly confounds the popular, with the strictly legal, sense of the terms * * * When the corporation is said, at the bar, to be public, it is not merely meant that the whole community may be the proper objects of the bounty, but that the government have the sole right, as trustee of the public interest, to regulate, control and direct the corporation, and its funds and its franchises, at its own will and pleasure. Now such an authority does not exist in the government, except where the corporation, is in the strictest sense, public; that is, where its whole interests and franchises are the exclusive property and domain of the government itself.””
7 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.