McDonald v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
279 U.S. 12 · 1929
Citation profile
12 federal appellate · 8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 34 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Republic of Iraq v. Beaty (2009), Reis v. Commissioner (1942)
12 federal appellate · 8 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
reviewedMacdonald v. United States (from First Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Wayman v. Southard · Springer v. Government of the Philippine Islands Agoncillo · Schlemmer v. Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburg Railway Co. · United States v. Dickson · Georgia Railroad & Banking Co. v. Smith
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 34 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] proviso is not always limited in its effect to the part of the enactment with which it is immediately associated; it may apply generally to all cases within the meaning of the language used.”
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.