United States v. Chavez’s Empirical Analysis
175 U.S. 509 · 1899
Citation profile
18 federal appellate · 23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 62 later decisions (7 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 1979 · most notably Robert Devine v. City of Los Angeles (1906), United States v. Fullard-Leo (1947)
18 federal appellate · 23 state decisions — followed in 13 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 Ricard v. Williams · Fletcher v. Fuller · United States v. Chaves · Ainsa v. New Mexico & Arizona Railroad
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 62 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"`Although neither limitation nor prescription runs against the United States government to the impairment of its title to property, yet "a grant will be presumed upon proof of an adverse, exclusive, and uninterrupted possession for 20 years, and that such rule will be applied as a presumptio juris et de jure, whenever, by possibility, a right may be acquired in any manner known to the law."'"”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Succeeding to the power and obligations of those Governments, must the United States do so? This is insisted by their counsel, and yet they have felt and expressed the equities which arise from the circumstances of the case. Whence arise those equities? That which establishes them may establish title. Upon a long and uninterrupted possession, the law bases presumptions as sufficient for legal judgment, in the absence of rebutting circumstances, as formal instruments, or records, or articulate testimony. Not that formal instruments or records are unnecessary, but it will be presumed that they once existed and have been lost. The inquiry then recurs, do such presumptions arise in this case and do they solve its questions?””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Thus, also, though lapse of time does not, of itself, furnish a conclusive legal bar to the title of the sovereign, agreeably to the maxim, 'nullum tempus occurrit regi;’ yet, if the adverse claim could have had a legal commencement, juries are instructed or advised to presume such commencement, after many years of uninterrupted adverse possession or enjoyment. Accordingly, royal grants have been thus found by the jury, after an indefinitely long-continued peaceable enjoyment, accompanied by the usual acts of ownership. So, after less than forty years’ possession of a tract of land, and proof of a prior order of council for the survey of the lot, and of an actual survey thereof accordingly, it was held that the jury were properly instructed to presume that a patent had been duly issued. In regard, however, to crown or public grants, a longer lapse of time has generally been deemed necessary, in order to justify this presumption, than is considered sufficient to authorize the like presumption in the case of grants from private persons.””
1 later decision 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.