Cook v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
288 U.S. 102 · 1933
Citation profile
204 federal appellate · 39 district · 15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 414 later decisions (26 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2020 · most notably McCulloch v. Sociedad Nacional De Marineros De Honduras (1963), Medellin v. Texas (2008)
204 federal appellate · 39 district · 15 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
reviewedUnited States v. Cook (from First Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Ker v. People of the State of Illinois · Ford v. United States · Brewster v. Gage · United States v. Rauscher · Whitney v. Robertson
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 414 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is true that where the United States, having possession of property, files a libel to enforce a forfeiture resulting from a violation of its laws, the fact that the possession was acquired by a wrongful act is immaterial. Dodge v. United States, 272 U.S. 530 , 532 [ 47 S.Ct. 191 , 71 L.Ed. 392 ], Compare Ker v. Illinois, 119 U.S. 436 , 444 [ 7 S.Ct. 225 , 30 L.Ed. 421 ]. The doctrine rests primarily upon the common-law rules that any person may, at his peril, seize property which has become forfeited to, or forfeitable by, the government; and that proceedings by the government to enforce a forfeiture ratify a seizure made by one without authority, since ratification is equivalent to antecedent delegation of authority to seize. . . . The doctrine is not applicable here. The objection to the seizure is not that it was wrongful merely because made by one upon whom the government had not conferred authority to seize at the place where the seizure was made. The objection is that the government itself lacked power to seize, since by the treaty it had imposed a territorial limitation upon its own authority. The Treaty fixes the conditions under which a ‘vessel may be seized and taken into a port of the United States, its territories or possessions for adjudication in accordance with’ the applicable laws. Thereby, Great Britain agreed that adjudication may follow a rightful seizure. Our government, lacking power to seize, lacked power, because of the Treaty, to subject the vessel”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“A treaty will not be deemed to have been abrogated or modified by a later statute unless such purpose on the part of Congress has been clearly expressed.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(I)n a strict sense the Treaty was self-executing, in that no legislation was necessary to authorize executive action pursuant to its provisions.”
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.