Anderson v. Dunn’s Empirical Analysis
19 U.S. 204 · 1821
Citation profile
175 federal appellate · 34 district · 120 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 642 later decisions (112 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably United States v. United Mine Workers of America (1947), Chambers v. Nasco, Inc. (1991)
175 federal appellate · 34 district · 120 state decisions — followed in 34 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 M'Culloch v. State of Maryland
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 642 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the least possible power adequate to the end proposed.”
27 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. In re Michael · In re Oliver“Courts of justice are universally acknowledged to be vested, by their very creation, with power to impose silence, respect, and decorum, in their presence, and submission to their lawful mandates.”
22 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The idea is Utopian that government can exist without leaving' the exercise of discretion somewhere. Public security against the abuse of such discretion must rest on responsibility and (Stated appeals to public approbation. Where all power is domed from the people, and public functionaries at short intervals deposit it at the feat of the people, to be resumed again only at their will, individual fears may be alarmed by the monsters of imagination, but individual liberty can be in little danger. No one is so visionary as to dispute the assertion that the role end and aim of all our Institutions is Ihe safety and happiness of the citizen. But the relation between the action and the end is not always so direct and palpable as to strike the eye of every observer. The science of government is the most abstruse of all sciences, if, indeed, that can be called a science which has but i'ew fixed principles, and practically consists in little more than the exercise o" a sound discretion, applied to the exigencies ol' the state as they arise. It is the science of experiment. But, if there is one maxim which necessarily rides over all others in the practical application of government, it is that the public functionaries must be left at liberty to exorcise the powers which the people have intrusted, to them. The interests and dignity of those who created them require the exertion of the powers indispensable to the ai I ainment of the ends of their creation. Nor is a casual conflict with”
5 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.