United States v. Southern Pacific Railroad’s Empirical Analysis
223 U.S. 565 · 1912
Citation profile
7 federal appellate · 2 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 21 later decisions (5 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 1971
7 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
reviewedUnited States v. Southern Pac. R. Co. (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Southern Pacific Railroad v. United States · Southern Pac Co v. United States · Wisconsin Cent Co v. Price County · Dowell v. Applegate · United States v. California & Oregon Land 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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“What a railroad is to be indemnified for may be fixed as of the moment of the grant, but what it may elect when its right to indemnity is determined depends on the state of the lands selected at the moment of choice. Of course the railroad is limited in choosing by the terms of the indemnity grant, but the so-called grant is rather to be described ás a power. Ordinarily no color of title is gained until the power is exercised. When it is exercised in satisfaction of a meritorious claim which the Government created upon valuable consideration and which it must be taken, to have intended to satisfy (so far as it may be satisfted'withm’the -territorial limits laid down), it seems to us that lands within those limits should not be excluded simply because in a different event they would have been subject to a paramount claim.”
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.