Jackson v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

49 federal appellate · 12 district · 30 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 167 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “. “The valley of the Mississippi river may in a broad sense be said to commence at Cape Girardeau, Mo., and to extend from there to the mouth of the river at the Gulf of Mexico. The river, however, in its course to the ocean, does not run through the center of the vast fertile and alluvial plains which, in a comprehensive and generic sense, constitute the delta of the Mississippi. On the contrary, the situation of the river in this respect varies, occasioned by the fact that, at divers places, the upland or hill country approaches to or constitutes the bank of the river. The difference in this regard is marked between the west and east banks. The west bank is divided into four great basins — the St. Francis Basin, which extends from Cape Girardeau to Helena; the White River Basin, which extends from Helena to the mouth of the Arkansas; the Tensas Basin, which extends from the month of the Arkansas to the mouth of the Red River; and the Atehafalaya Basin, extending from the mouth of the Red River to the Gulf. Practically in the long sweep from Helena, where St. Francis Basin ends and the White River Basin begins, to the ending of the Atehafalaya Basin at the Gulf, there is no real topographical distinction between the basins, the west bank of the river in that great distance consisting of alluvial country having generally a very wide though varying expanse. The division into basins, putting out of view the St. Francis Basin, is therefore merely the result of a consideration of”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Kincaid v. United States

2. ““Tlio third consideration—that is, the preventing of the outflow of water by work done in the tributaries, and the consequent increase in the volume of water in the river—cannot he tested from the point of view of individual authority, as the power to do so involves necessarily the exercise of governmental power. We therefore come to consider the proposition in that aspect. In doing so, however, it is to be observed that, even if all the previous considerations which we have stated, concerning the nonliability to result from building levees, measured by the right of an individual to build a levee to prevent the water of a river from overflowing its banks and destroying his property, be put out of view, and the case, therefore, in all its aspects be tested by the scope of the governmental authority possessed by the United States, the absence of merit in all the claims is too clear to require anything but statement. We say this because the plenary power of the United States to legislate for the benefit of navigation, and to construct such works as are appropriate to that end, without liability for remote or consequential damages, has been so often decided as to cause the subject not to be open. It was directly ruled as to work done by the Mississippi River Commission in Bedford v. United States, 192 U. S. 225 , 24 Sup. Ct. 238 , 48 L. Ed. 414 , upon the authority of which case, as we have said, the court below placed its ruling, and as the underlying principles which controlled”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. St. Louis Southwestern Ry. Co. v. Board of Directors of Miller Levee Dist. No. 2