United States v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
18 U.S. 153 · 1820
Citation profile
96 federal appellate · 23 district · 8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 211 later decisions (10 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2019 · most notably Cheek v. United States (1991), Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain (2004)
96 federal appellate · 23 district · 8 state decisions
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 Butterly v. Blanchard
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 211 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he law of nations `may be ascertained by consulting the works of jurists, writing professedly on public law; or by the general usage and practice of nations; or by judicial decisions recognising and enforcing that law.'”
18 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““.That if any person or persons whatsoever shall upon the high seas commit the crime' of piracy as defined by the law of nations, and such offender or offenders shall be brought into or found in the United States, every such offender or offenders shall upon conviction thereof be punished with death."”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations,”
4 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.