McKee v. Gratz’s Empirical Analysis
260 U.S. 127 · 1922
Citation profile
27 federal appellate · 50 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 111 later decisions (8 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Carpenter v. United States (2018), Florida v. Jardines (2013)
27 federal appellate · 50 state decisions — followed in 14 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedGratz v. McKee (from Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Missouri v. Holland · Geer v. State of Connecticut · Hardin v. Jordan · McCready v. Virginia · Bolles Wooden Ware Co v. United States
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 111 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A license may be implied from the habits of the country,”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]here is a plain distinction between [mussels] and game birds or freely moving fish, that may shift to another jurisdiction without regard to the will of land owner or State. . . . On the other hand it seems not unreasonable to say that mussels having a practically fixed habitat and little ability to move are as truly in the possession of the owner of the land in which they are sunk as would be a prehistoric boat discovered under ground or unknown property at the bottom of a canal.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“We are slow to believe that there were public rights extending to the removal of mussels against the land owner's will.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Longshore
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.