Springer v. Government of the Philippine Islands Agoncillo’s Empirical Analysis
277 U.S. 189 · 1928
Citation profile
148 federal appellate · 61 district · 258 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 668 later decisions (59 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2025 · most notably Buckley v. Valeo (1976), Immigration & Naturalization Service v. Chadha (1983)
148 federal appellate · 61 district · 258 state decisions — followed in 36 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 Brown v. Walker · J. W. Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States · Field v. Clark · United States v. Grimaud · Myers 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 668 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Legislative power, as distinguished from executive power, is the authority to make laws, but not to enforce them or appoint the agents charged with the duty of such enforcement. The latter are executive functions.”
27 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“`The great ordinances of the Constitution do not establish and divide fields of black and white.'”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“It does not seem to need argument to show that however we may disguise it by veiling words we do not and cannot carry out the distinction between legislative and executive action with mathematical precision and divide the branches into watertight compartments, were it ever so desirable to do so, which I am far from believing that it is, or that the Constitution requires. [Springer v. Government of Philippine Islands, 277 U. S. 189, 211 , 48 S. Ct. 480, 485 , 72 L. Ed. 845, 853 (1928).]”
5 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.