Downes v. Bidwell’s Empirical Analysis
182 U.S. 244 · 1901
Citation profile
284 federal appellate · 199 district · 62 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 922 later decisions (116 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Baker v. Carr (1962), Green v. United States (1957)
284 federal appellate · 199 district · 62 state decisions — followed in 17 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 William Marbury v. James Madison · Yick Wo v. Hopkins · M'Culloch v. State of Maryland · Gibbons v. Ogden · Reynolds v. States
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 922 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“is not to consider one provision of the Constitution alone, but to contemplate all, and therefore to limit one conceded attribute by those qualifications which naturally result from the other powers granted by that instrument, so that the whole may be interpreted by the spirit which vivifies, and not by the letter which killeth.”
52 later decisions quote this exact passage“[I]t can nowhere be inferred that the territories were considered a part of the United States. The Constitution was created by the people of the United States, as a union of States, to be governed solely by representatives of the States; ... In short, the Constitution deals with States, their people, and their representatives.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage“[A]ll Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.