United States v. Cress’s Empirical Analysis
243 U.S. 316 · 1917
Citation profile
219 federal appellate · 51 district · 169 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 896 later decisions (138 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2025 · most notably Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City (1978), Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp. (1982)
219 federal appellate · 51 district · 169 state decisions — followed in 30 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 Shively v. Bowlby · Monongahela Navigation Co. v. United States · Philadelphia Co. v. Stimson · United States v. Chandler-Dunbar Water Power Co. · The Daniel Ball
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 896 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“. . . it is the character of the invasion, not the amount of damage resulting from it, so long as the damage is substantial, that determines the question whether it is a taking.”
18 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It follows from what we have said that the servitude of privately-owned'lands forming the banks and bed of a stream to the interests of navigation is a natural servitude, confined to such streams as, in their ordinary and natural condition, are navigable in fact, and confined to the natural condition of the stream. And, assuming that riparian owners upon non-navigable tributaries of navigable streams are subject to such inconveniences as may arise from the exercise of the common right of nagivation, this in like manner must be limited to the natural right. The findings make it clear that the dams in question, constructed by the government in the Cumberland and Kentucky rivers, respectively, are -for raising the level of those streams along certain stretches by means of backwater, so as to render them, to the extent of the raising, artificial canals instead of natural waterways. In the language of engineering, the government has ‘canalized’ the ‘rivers. We intimate no doubt of the power of the United States to carry out this kind of improvement. Nor do we doubt that, upon the completion of the improvements, these rivers: the Cumberland, because it is an avenue of communication between two states; the Kentucky and also the Cumberland, because, in connection with the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, they furnish highways of commerce among many states (Gilman v. Philadelphia, 3 Wall. 713, 725 , 18 L.Ed. 96, 99 ; The Daniel Ball, 10 Wall. 557, 563 , 19 L. Ed. 999, 1001 ; South Caroli”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Under the law of Kentucky, ownership of the bed of the creek, subject only to the natural flow of the water, is recognized as fully as ownership of the mill itself. The right to have the water flow away from the mill dam unobstructed, except as in the course of nature, is not a mere easement or appurtenance, but exists by the law of nature as an inseparable part of the land. A destruction of this right is a taking of a part of the land.””
3 later decisions 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.