Cortes v. Baltimore Insular Line, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
287 U.S. 367 · 1932
Citation profile
524 federal appellate · 61 district · 153 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,147 later decisions (68 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2025 · most notably Seas Shipping Co. v. Sieracki (1946), Romero v. International Terminal Operating Co. (1959)
524 federal appellate · 61 district · 153 state decisions — followed in 20 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
reviewedCortes v. Baltimore Insular Line, Inc. (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on The Osceola · Baltimore Co v. Phillips · Chelentis v. Luckenbach Steamship Co. · Western Fuel Co. v. Garcia
Cited together with Calmar Ss Corporation v. Taylor · The Osceola · Aguilar v. Standard Oil Co. · Vaughan v. Atkinson · Pacific Co v. Peterson
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 1,147 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The tortuous development of the law of wrongful death in the maritime context illustrates the truth of Justice Cardozo's observation that '[death] is a composer of strife by the general law of the sea as it was for many centuries by the common law of the land.'”
27 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““We do not read the act for the relief of seamen as expressing the will of Congress that only the same defaults imposing liability upon carriers by rail shall impose liability upon carriers by water. The conditions at sea differ widely from those on land, and the diversity of conditions breeds diversity of duties. This court has said that ‘the ancient characterization of seamen as “wards of admiralty” is”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Congress did not mean that the standards of legal duty must be the same by land and sea,”
3 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.