Cowell v. Lammers’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 2 state decisions

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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The next question is, did the land in question pass, by the grant of 1862, perfected in 1866-67, in which a gold mine was discovered in 1883, twenty-one years after the grant attached, by the filing of a plat of the general route of the railroad, and the withdrawal of the lands in pursuance of the statute, by the secretary of the interior, and more than seventeen years after the completion of the road, and its acceptance by the president; and more than sixteen years after the final survey, and report of the lands as agricultural, and not mineral. The parties to this grant, both the United States and the grantee, must be presumed to have contemplated a grant in view of the condition of the lands as they were known, or appeared to be, at the time the grant took effect. Iti the exception of ‘ mineral lands ’ from the grant, congress could not have contemplated that the discovery of a paying mine, fifteen or twenty years after the making of the grant, and the performance of all the conditions by the grantee, required to perfect the title, and render it irrevocable, should vitiate the grant. If so, then such a discovery fifty, or one hundred years after, would effect the same result. In granting the public lands, congress must be presumed to deal with them in view of the conditions as they are known, or supposed to be, at the time. Exceptions must be presumed to refer to matters that are readily apparent upon inspection. Any others would be altogether too indefinite to be valid. ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Northern Pac. R. v. Barden