United States v. Causby’s Empirical Analysis
328 U.S. 256 · 1946
Citation profile
424 federal appellate · 127 district · 560 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,150 later decisions (110 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City (1978), Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Commerce Corp. (1949)
424 federal appellate · 127 district · 560 state decisions — followed in 43 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.
Relationships
Relies on United States v. Miller · United States v. General Motors Corp. · United States ex rel. Tennessee Valley Authority v. Powelson · United States v. Cress
Cited together with Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City · Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon · Griggs v. County of Allegheny Pennsylvania · Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp. · Armstrong v. United States
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 2,150 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“so low and so frequent as to be a direct and immediate interference with the enjoyment and use of the land”
44 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The path of glide for airplanes might reduce a valuable factory site to grazing land, an orchard to a vegetable patch, a residential section to a wheat field. Some value would remain. But the use of the airspace immediately above the land would limit the utility of the land and cause a diminution in its value.”
17 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[Fjrom the ancient common law maxim that land ownership extends to the sky above and the earth’s center below, one might extrapolate that the same rule should apply two miles below the surface. But that maxim — cujus est solum ejus est usque ad, coelum, et ad inferos— “has no place in the modern world.” Wheeling an airplane across the surface of one’s property without permission is a trespass; flying the plane through the airspace two miles above the property is not. Lord Coke, who pronounced the maxim, did not consider the possibility of airplanes. But neither did he imagine oil wells. The law of trespass need no more be the same two miles below the surface than two miles above.”
11 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.