Seavy v. Dearborn’s Empirical Analysis
1849
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 1 district · 41 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 46 later decisions — most recently December 1997 · most notably Hanes v. State (1900), Hayden v. Commonwealth (1910)
4 federal appellate · 1 district · 41 state decisions — followed in 10 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 Sands v. Hildreth
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 46 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In the first place, it does not extend so far as to authorize a party to prove, by a witness on cross examination, things positively improper to be proved at all; and, secondly, he cannot, for the purpose of discrediting a witness, contradict, by other evidence, his statements that are improper or immaterial. In other words, he may, for the purposes before indicated (i. e., to test a witness’ memory, capacity and veracity,) ask questions not strictly relevant to the issue, provided they do not tend to elicit testimony that is injurious or improper.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. McKee v. People““A witness therefore shall not be interrogated on a subject not relevant to the issue for the mere purpose of contradicting him.””
1 later decision 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.