Southern Pacific Railroad Company v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
200 U.S. 354 · 1906
Citation profile
11 federal appellate · 2 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 1936
11 federal appellate · 2 district · 2 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedSouthern Pac. R. v. United States (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Hastings Co v. Whitney · Kansas Pacific Railway Co. v. Dunmeyer · United States v. Winona & St. Peter Railroad · Williams v. United States · Whitney v. Taylor
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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The reasonable purpose of the government undoubtedly is that which is expressed, namely, while we are giving liberally to the railroad company, we do not give any lands which we have already sold, or to which, according to our laws, we have permitted1 a pre-emption or homestead right to attach.””
1 later decision 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.