Cherokee Nation v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

38 federal appellate · 18 district · 16 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 182 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “compound interest is not allowed to be computed on a debt”

   6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Pawnee Indian Tribe of Oklahoma v. United States · United States v. Mescalero Apache Tribe

2. “When we consider the rule requiring an express provision of contract or statute to justify the imposition of interest in adjudicating any claim against the United States, we can find nothing in the circumstances of this case to increase the interest as adjudged. * * * The only contractual obligation here is for simple five percent, interest until payment. * * * * * * And by § 3659 of the Revised Statutes, re-enacting § 2 of the Act of Congress of September 11, 1841, 5 Stat. 465 , which provides: “All funds held in trust by the United States, and the annual interest accruing thereon, when not otherwise required by treaty, shall be invested in stocks of the United States, bearing a rate of interest not less than five per centum per annum.” It is urged that the largest item, of $1,111,284.70, was taken out of a $5,000,000 trust fund held by the United States for the benefit of the Cherokees, and therefore that it should be treated as if it were always in the Treasury of the United States, held in trust for the Indians, and as if the United States had collected the interest thereon out of the invested stocks, and had refused to pay it over as annuities to the Indians. This claim proves too much. It would require compound interest brought about by annual or semi-annual rests for near a century, an amount that the Solicitor General suggests would be equal to the national debt. The argument is shown to be wholly without support in the circumstance that the Cherokees and the United S”

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

3. “* * * The judgment of this Court in the suit by the Cherokee Nation against the United States, in April, 1906 ( 202 U. S. 101 ), already referred to, awarded a large amount of interest. The question of interest was considered and decided, and it is quite clear that but for the special Act of 1919, above quoted, the question here mooted would have been foreclosed as res judicata. In passing the Act, Congress must have been well advised of this, and the only possible construction therefore to be put upon it is that Congress has therein expressed its desire, so far as the question of interest is concerned, to waive the effect of the judgment as res judicata, and to direct the Court of Claims to re-examine it and de termine whether the interest therein allowed was all that should have been allowed, or whether it should be f oimd to be as now claimed by the Cherokee Nation. * * *”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Western (Old Settler) Cherokee Indians ex rel. Owen v. United States