United States v. Gerlach Live Stock Co.’s Empirical Analysis
339 U.S. 725 · 1950
Citation profile
172 federal appellate · 13 district · 56 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 522 later decisions (46 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably Dugan v. Rank (1963), Eastport Steamship Corp. v. United States (1967)
172 federal appellate · 13 district · 56 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.
Relationships
Applies 43 U.S.C. § 371 (Northwestern New Mexico Rural Water Projects Act) · 43 U.S.C. § 661
Relies on United States v. American Trucking Associations · National Labor Relations Board v. Hearst Publications, Inc. · United States v. Butler · Shively v. Bowlby · United States v. Appalachian Electric Power Co.
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 522 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The Central Valley basin development envisions, in one sense, an integrated undertaking, but also an aggregate of many subsidiary projects, each of which is of first magnitude. It consist of thirty-eight major dams and reservoirs bordering the valley floor and scores of smaller ones in headwaters. It contemplates twenty-eight hydropower generating stations. It includes hundreds of miles of main canals, thousands of miles of laterals and drains, electric transmission and feeder lines and substations a vast network of structure for the control and use of water on two million acres of land already irrigated, three million acres of land to be newly irrigated, 380, 000 acres in the delta needing protection from intrusions of salt water, and for municipal and miscellaneous purposes including cities, towns, duck clubs and game refuges. These projects are not only widely separated geographically, many of them physically independent in operation, but they are authorized in separate acts from year to year and are to be constructed at different times over a considerable span of years.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Sec. 7. That where in carrying out the provisions of this Act it becomes necessary to acquire any rights or property, the Secretary of the Interior is hereby authorized to acquire the same for the United States by purchase or by condemnation under judicial process, and to pay from the reclamation fund the sums which may be needed for that purpose, and it shall be the duty of the Attorney-General of the United States upon every application of the Secretary of the Interior, under this Act, to cause proceedings to be commenced for condemnation within thirty days from the receipt of the application at the Department of Justice. “Sec. 8. That nothing in this Act shall be construed as affecting or intended to affect or to in any way interfere with the laws of any State or Territory relating to the control, appropriation, use, or distribution of water used in irrigation, or any vested right acquired thereunder, and the Secretary of the Interior, in carrying out the provisions of this Act, shall proceed in conformity with such laws, and nothing herein shall in any way affect any right of any State or of the Federal Government or of any landowner, appropriator, or user of water in, to, or from any .interstate stream or the waters thereof: Provided, That the right to the use of water acquired under the provisions of this Act shall be appurtenant to the land irrigated, and beneficial use shall be the basis, the measure, and ■the limit of the right.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“Congress has recognized the property status of water rights vested under California law.”
3 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.