Johnson v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
333 U.S. 46 · 1948
Citation profile
432 federal appellate · 67 district · 69 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 747 later decisions (8 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2025 · most notably Vaughan v. Atkinson (1962), Schulz v. Pennsylvania Railroad (1956)
432 federal appellate · 67 district · 69 state decisions — followed in 19 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
reviewedUnited States v. Johnson (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 45 U.S.C. § 51 (Federal Employers' Liability Act)
Relies on Glasser v. United States · Quercia v. United States · In Re Peterson · Anne Sweeney v. William G Errving
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 747 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(f) ederal judges are not referees at prize-fights but functionaries of justice.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The rule deals only with permissible inferences from unexplained events.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“where, as here, the injured person is not implicated, the falling of the block is alone sufficient basis for an inference that the man who held the block was negligent.”
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.