Swan Finch Company v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
190 U.S. 143 · 1903
Citation profile
32 federal appellate · 12 district · 23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 195 later decisions (13 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Cunard Co v. Mellon (1923), Houghton v. Payne (1904)
32 federal appellate · 12 district · 23 state decisions
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 Hartranft v. Wiegmann · United States v. Isham · American Net & Twine Co. v. Worthington · Tide Water Oil Co. v. United 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 195 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he legal notion ... of exportation is a severance of goods from the mass of things belonging to this country with the intention of uniting them to the mass of things belonging to some foreign country.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“* * * Being a governmental grant of a privilege or benefit it is to be construed in favor of the government and against the party claiming the grant. Where the burden is placed upon a citizen, if there be a doubt as to the extent of the burden it is resolved in favor of the citizen, but where a privilege is granted any doubt is resolved in favor of the government.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“But if there be any doubt as to the proper construction of this statute (and we think there is none), then that construction must be adopted which is most advantageous to the interests of the Government. The statute being a grant of a privilege, must be construed most strongly in favor of the grantor.”
2 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.