Leovy v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
177 U.S. 621 · 1900
Citation profile
67 federal appellate · 20 district · 32 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 234 later decisions (30 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2023 · most notably Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen (1917), United States v. Appalachian Electric Power Co. (1940)
67 federal appellate · 20 district · 32 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Gibbons v. Ogden · Shively v. Bowlby · Barbier v. Connolly · The Daniel Ball · The Montello
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 234 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[i]t is not, however, as Chief Justice Shaw said (Rowe v. [Granite] Bridge Co., 21 Pick., 344 ), “every small creek in which a fishing skiff or gunning canoe can be made to float at high water, which is deemed navigable, but, in order to give it the character of a navigable stream, it must be generally and commonly useful to some purpose of trade or agriculture.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the cause of malarial and malignant fevers”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Those rivers mast be regarded as public navigable rivers in law which are navigable in fact. And they are navigable in fact when they are used, or are susceptible of being used, in their ordinary condition, as highways for commerce, over which trade and travel are or may be conducted in the customary modes of trade and travel on water. And they constitute navigable waters of the United States, within the meaning of the acts of Congress, in contradistinction from the navigable waters of the states, when they form, in their ordinary condition, by themselves, or by uniting with other waters, a continued highway, over which commerce is or may be carried on with other states or foreign countries in the customary modes in which such commerce is conducted by water.””
2 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.