Thatcher v. Powell’s Empirical Analysis
19 U.S. 119 · 1821
Citation profile
29 federal appellate · 8 district · 76 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 174 later decisions (18 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2004 · most notably John Den James Murray and John Kayser v. The Hoboken Land and Improvement Company John Den James B Murray et al. (1855), Burgess v. Seligman (1882)
29 federal appellate · 8 district · 76 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.
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 174 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“That no individual or public officer can sell, and convey a good title to, the land of another, unless authorized so to do by express law, is one of those self-evident propositions to which the mind assents, without hesitation; and that the person invested with such a power must pursue with precision the course prescribed by law, or his act is invalid, is a principle which has been repeatedly recognized in this court.”
7 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.