United States v. Ryan’s Empirical Analysis
284 U.S. 167 · 1931
Citation profile
110 federal appellate · 26 district · 13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 326 later decisions (38 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2007 · most notably United States v. American Trucking Associations (1940), Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill (1978)
110 federal appellate · 26 district · 13 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
reviewedRyan v. United States (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Phillips v. Commissioner · United States v. Stowell · United States v. One Ford Coupe Automobile · J. W. Goldsmith, Jr.-Grant Co. v. United States · United States v. Jin Fuey Moy
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 326 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““A literal application of a statute which would lead to absurd consequences is to be avoided whenever a reasonable application can be given which is consistent with the legislative purpose.””
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(s)tatutes to prevent fraud on the revenue are construed less narrowly, even though a forfeiture results, than penal statutes and others involving forfeitures.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The companion section, 3450 [ 26 U.S.C.A. §§ 1156 , 1441], authorizing the forfeiture of vehicles and horses used .for propelling them made no such distinction. By it, vehicles used for transporting or concealing taxable articles with the prescribed intent are forfeitable, as well as those used to transport or conceal contraband raw material or implements of manufacture. See Goldsmith-Grant Co. v. United States, 254 U.S. 505 , 41 S.Ct. 189 , 65 L.Ed. 376 ; United States v. One Ford Coupe, 272 U.S. 321 , 47 S.Ct. 154 , 71 L.Ed. 279 , 47 A.L.R. 1025 . “The separation by the revisers of the first clause from the other two by a period instead of a semicolon, retaining the conjunction ‘And,’ and the dropping of the conjunction ‘also’ from the second and third clauses, are changes hardly substantial enough to warrant any changed construction of the section. McDonald v. Hovey, 110 U.S. 619, 629 , 4 S.Ct. 142 , 28 L.Ed. 269 ; Anderson v. Pacific S. S. Co., 225 U.S. 187, 199 , 32 S.Ct. 626 , 56 L.Ed. 1047 ; see Buck Stove Co. v. Vickers, 226 U.S. 205, 213 , 33 S.Ct. 41 , 57 L.Ed. 189 .””
1 later decision 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.