Cobbledick v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
309 U.S. 323 · 1940
Citation profile
1,735 federal appellate · 62 district · 233 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,977 later decisions (167 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2026 · most notably Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp. (1949), Mitchell v. Forsyth (1985)
1,735 federal appellate · 62 district · 233 state decisions — followed in 33 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
reviewedPalmuth v. United States (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Edwin Hale v. William Henkel · Burdeau v. McDowell · Wilson v. United States · Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United States
Cited together with Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp. · United States v. Ryan · Perlman v. United States · Di Bella v. United States · Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay
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 2,977 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Finality as a condition of review is an historic characteristic of federal appellate procedure.”
107 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““* * * But a proceeding like that under § 12 of the Interstate Commerce Act may be deemed self-contained, so far as the judiciary is concerned — as much so as an independent suit in equity in which appeal will lie from an injunction without the necessity of waiting for disobedience. After the court has ordered a recusant witness to testify before the Commission, there remains nothing for it to do. Not only is this true with respect to the particular witness whose testimony is sought; there is not, as in the case of a grand jury or trial, any further judicial inquiry which would be halted were the offending witness permitted to appeal. The proceeding before the district court is not ancillary to any judicial proceeding. So far as the court is concerned, it is complete in itself.””
21 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[i]t is no less important to safeguard against undue interruption the inquiry instituted by a grand jury than to protect from delay the progress of the trial after an indictment has been found.”
15 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.