De Lima v. Bidwell’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

181 federal appellate · 117 district · 29 state decisions

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 615 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It was held by a majority of this court in Cary v. Curtis, 3 How. 236 , 11 L.Ed. 576 , that this act precluded an action of assumpsit for money had and received against the collector for duties received by him, and that the act of 1839 furnished the sole remedy. It was said of that case in Arnson v. Murphy, 109 U.S. 238, 240 , 3 S.Ct. 184, 186 , 27 L.Ed. 920 , 921: ‘Congress, being in session at the time that decision was announced, passed the explanatory act of February 26, 1845, which, by legislative construction of the act of 1839, restored to the claimant his right of action against the collector, but required the protest to be made in writing at the time of payment of the duties alleged to have been illegally exacted, and took from the Secretary of the Treasury the authority to refund conferred by the act of 1839. 5 Stat. 349 , 727. This act of 1845 was in force, as was decided in Barney v. Watson, 92 U.S. 449 , 23 L.Ed. 730 , until repealed by implication by the act of June 30, 1864,’ c. 171, 13 Stat. 202 , 214, carried into the Revised Statutes as sections 2931 and 3011. In the same case of Arnson v. Murphy, 109 U.S. 238 , 3 S.Ct. 184 , 27 L.Ed. 920 , it was decided that the common-law right of action against the collector to recover back duties illegally collected was taken away by statute, and a remedy given, based upon these sections, which was exclusive. The decision in Elliott v. Swartwout [ 10 Pet. 137 , 9 L.Ed. 373 ] was recognized, but so far as respected cust”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Gulbenkian v. United States · Washington International Insurance v. United States

2. ““While a statute is presumed to speak from the time of its enactment it embraces all such persons or things as subsequently fall within its scope, and ceases to apply to such as thereafter fall without its scope. Thus a statute forbidding the sale of liquors to miners applies not only to minors in existence at the time the statute was enacted, but to all who are subsequently born, and ceases to apply to such as thereafter reach their majority. So, when the Constitution of the United States declares in article 1, § 10, that the states shall not do certain things, this declaration operates not only upon the 13 original states, but upon all who subsequently become such; and when Congress places certain restrictions upon the powers of a territorial Legislature, such restrictions cease to operate the moment such territory is admitted as a state. By parity of reasoning a country ,ceases to be foreign the instant it becomes domestic. So, too, if Congress saw fit to cede one of its newly acquired territories (even assuming that it had the right to do so) to a foreign power, there could be no doubt that, from the day of such cession and the delivery of possession, such territory would become a foreign country, and be reinstated as such under the tariff laws. Certainly no act of Congress would be necessary in such case to declare that the laws of the United States had ceased to apply to it.””

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State Ex Rel. West v. Frame · Maben v. Rosser

3. “needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Vermilya-Brown Co. v. Connell · 369 F. Supp. 562 - United States v. Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation