Ellis v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
206 U.S. 246 · 1907
Citation profile
132 federal appellate · 34 district · 86 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 363 later decisions (38 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2016 · most notably Connally v. General Construction Co. (1926), Screws v. United States (1945)
132 federal appellate · 34 district · 86 state decisions — followed in 23 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 Rector Etc of Holy Trinity Church v. United States · Joseph Lochner v. People of the State of New York · Allgeyer v. State of Louisiana · Holden v. Hardy · Johnson v. Southern Pacific Co.
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 363 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“If a man intentionally adopts certain conduct in certain circumstances known to him, and that conduct is forbidden by the law under those circumstances, he intentionally breaks the law in the only sense in which the law ever considers intent.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Even if, as in other instances, a nice case might be left to the jury, what emergencies are within the statute is merely a constituent element of a question of law, since the determination of that element determines the extent of the statutory prohibition and is material only to that end. The ruling was correct.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Both of the phrases to be construed admit a broad enough interpretation to cover these cases, but the question is whether that interpretation is reasonable, and, in a penal statute, fair. Certainly they may be read in a narrower sense with at least equal ease. The statute says ‘laborers and mechanics * * * employed * * * upon any of the public works.’ It does not say, and no one supposes it to mean, ‘any public work.’ The words ‘upon’ and ‘any of the’ and the plural ‘works’ import that the objects of labor referred to have some kind of permanent existence and structural unity, and are severally capable of being regarded as complete wholes. * * * It is unnecessary to lay special stress on the title to the soil in which the channels were dug, but it may be noticed that it was not in the United States. The language of the acts is ‘public works of the United States.’ As the works are things upon which the labor is expended, the most natural meaning of ‘of the United States’ is belonging to the United States.””
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.