United States v. Marchant’s Empirical Analysis
25 U.S. 480 · 1827
Citation profile
60 federal appellate · 10 district · 72 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 174 later decisions (24 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2025 · most notably Swain v. State of Alabama (1965), Zafiro v. United States (1993)
60 federal appellate · 10 district · 72 state decisions — followed in 29 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.
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 174 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The right of peremptory challenge is not, of itself, a right to select, but a right to reject jurors. * * *”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“But a still more direct conclusion against the right may be drawn from the admitted right of the crown to challenge in criminal cases, and the practice under that right. We do not say that the same right belongs to any of the States in the Union; for there may be a diversity in this respect as to the local jurisprudence or practice. The inquiry here is, not as to what is the State prerogative, but, simply, what is the common law doctrine as to the point under consideration. Until the statute of 33 Edw. 1 , the crown might challenge peremptorily any juror, without assigning any cause; but that statute took away that right and narrowed the challenges of the crown to those for cause shown. But the practice since this statute has uniformly been, and it is now clearly settled, not to compel the crown to show cause at the time of objection taken, but to put aside the juror until the whole panel is gone through.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“■ “Upon a joint trial, each prisoner may challenge his'full number, and every juror challenged as to one is withdrawn from the panel as to all the prisoners on the trial; and thus, in effect, the prisoners in such a case possess the power of peremptory challenge to the aggregate of the numbers to which they are respectively entitled. This is the rule clearly laid down by Lord Coke, Lord Hale, and Serjeant Hawkins, and indeed by all the elementary writers.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Durein
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.