Shell v. Duncan’s Empirical Analysis
1889
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently September 1986
2 federal appellate · 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.
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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Now, what is the right, title, and interest which a married man has in land of which he is seised during coverture? It certainly is not such an absolute, unqualified interest as would enable him to alienate it, free from the claim of dower, either by deed or devise, but his alienation is always subject to the wife’s right of dower, which can only be released or extinguished by her own act. Nothing that the husband may do, can in any way affect it. From this, it follows that when the right, title, and interest of the husband is sold, either directly by himself, or through the medium of an officer of the law, the purchaser takes no more than what was sold, — the right, title, and interest of the husband, which does not include the dower interest; and hence the purchaser must take his title subject to the wife’s right of dower.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Devers v. Dalonas
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.