Starr v. Long Jim’s Empirical Analysis
227 U.S. 613 · 1913
Citation profile
17 federal appellate · 8 district · 18 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 101 later decisions (14 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2021 · most notably Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company v. Pueblo of Santa Ana (1985), United States v. Shoshone Tribe of Indians (1938)
17 federal appellate · 8 district · 18 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
reviewedStarr v. Long Jim
Relationships
Relies on Ray Jones v. Patrick Meehan · Brick v. . Campbell · Bank of America v. Banks · Den ex dem. Wooden v. Shotwell
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 101 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In construing any treaty between the United States and an Indian tribe, it must always . . . be borne in mind that the negotiations for the treaty are conducted, on the part of the United States, an enlightened and powerful nation, by representatives skilled in diplomacy, masters of a written language, understanding the modes and forms of creating the various technical estates known to their law, and assisted by an interpreter employed by themselves; that the treaty is drawn up by them and in their own language; that the Indians, on the other hand, are a weak and dependent people, who have no written language and are wholly unfamiliar with all the forms of legal expression, and whose only knowledge of the terms in which the treaty is framed is that imparted to them by the interpreter employed by the United States; and that the treaty must therefore be construed, not according to the technical meaning of its words to learned lawyers, but in the sense in which they would naturally be understood by the Indians.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Since it is entirely plain, in the case before us, that the title to the lands in question was retained by the United States for reasons of public policy, and in order to protect the Indians against their own improvidence, it follows as matter of course that a conveyance made by one of them, before the title was Vested in him pursuant to the act of 1905, was in the very teeth of the policy of the law, and could not operate as a conveyance, either by its primary force or by way of estoppel.””
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.