Roberts v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
176 U.S. 221 · 1900
Citation profile
136 federal appellate · 37 district · 31 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 291 later decisions (22 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2006 · most notably Sloan Shipyards Corporation v. United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation (1922), Wilbur v. United States ex rel. Kadrie (1930)
136 federal appellate · 37 district · 31 state decisions — followed in 15 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Dunlap v. Black
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 291 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(e)very executive officer whose duty is plainly devolved upon him by statute might refuse to perform it, and when his refusal is brought before the court he might successfully plead that the performance of the duty involved the construction of a statute by him....”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The law relating to mandamus against a public officer is well settled in the abstract, the only doubt which arises being whether the facts regarding any particular- case bring it within the law which permits the writ to issue where a mere ministerial duty is imposed upon an executive officer, which duty he is bound, to perform without any further question. If he refuse under such circumstances, mandamus will lie to compel him to perform his duty.””
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.