Wells v. Roper’s Empirical Analysis
246 U.S. 335 · 1918
Citation profile
85 federal appellate · 27 district · 22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 220 later decisions (38 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2003 · most notably Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman (1984), Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Commerce Corp. (1949)
85 federal appellate · 27 district · 22 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
reviewedWells v. Roper (from District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Philadelphia Co. v. Stimson · Noble v. Union River Logging Railroad · American School of Magnetic Healing v. McAnnulty · Belknap v. Schild
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 220 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The effect of the injunction asked for would have been to oblige.1 the United States to accept continued performance of plaintiff’s contract, and thus prevent the inauguration of the experimental service contemplated by the act of 1914 — a direct interference with one of the processes of government. The argument to the contrary assumes to treat defendant, not as an official, but as an individual who, although happening to hold public office, was threatening to perpetrate an unlawful act outside of its functions. But the averments of the bill make it clear that defendant was withorit personal interest and was acting solely in his official capacity and within the scope of his duties. Indeed, it was only because of his official authority that plaintiff’s interests were at all endangered by what he proposed to do.””
2 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.