Scranton v. Wheeler’s Empirical Analysis
179 U.S. 141 · 1900
Citation profile
68 federal appellate · 17 district · 99 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 491 later decisions (114 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2023 · most notably Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Commerce Corp. (1949), Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council (1992)
68 federal appellate · 17 district · 99 state decisions — followed in 24 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 Gibbons v. Ogden · Shively v. Bowlby · Monongahela Navigation Co. v. United States · Tennessee v. Union & Planters' Bank · Davidson v. New Orleans
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 491 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a qualified title, a bare technical title, not at [their] absolute disposal ... but to be held at all times subordinate to such use of the submerged lands and of the waters following over them as may be consistent with or demanded by the public rights of navigation,”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“is property, and is valuable, and, though it must be enjoyed in due subjection to the rights of the public, it cannot be arbitrarily or capriciously destroyed or impaired. It is a right of which, when once vested, the owner can only be deprived in accordance with established law, and if necessary that it be taken for the public good, upon due compensation.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The decision in Yates v. Milwaukee cannot be regarded as an adjudication upon the particular point involved in the present case. That, as we have seen, was a case in which the riparian owner had in conformity with law erected a wharf in front of his upland in order to have access to navigable water. 'Che city of Milwaukee attempted arbitrarily and capriciously to destroy or remove the wharf that bad lawfully come into existence and was not shown, in any appropriate mode, to have been an obstruction to navigation. It was a case in which a municipal corporation intended the actual destruction of tangible property belonging to a riparian owner and lawfully used by him in reaching navigable wTater, and not, like this, a case of the exercise in a. proper manner of an admitted governmental power resulting indirectly or incidentally in the loss of the citizen’s right of access to navigation — a right never exercised by him in the construction of a wharf before the improvement in question was made by the government.””
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.