Williams v. Lee’s Empirical Analysis
1959
Citation profile
466 federal appellate · 252 district · 882 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,015 later decisions (132 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2025 · most notably Morton v. Mancari (1974), Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez (1978)
466 federal appellate · 252 district · 882 state decisions — followed in 30 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. Kagama · Samuel Worcester v. The State of Georgia · Donnelly v. United States · The Cherokee Nation v. The State of Georgia
Cited together with McClanahan v. State Tax Commission of Arizona · Montana v. United States · White Mountain Apache Tribe v. Bracker · Mescalero Apache Tribe v. Jones · Washington v. Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation
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 2,015 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“on the right of reservation Indians to make their own laws and be ruled by them.”
94 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“There can be no doubt that to allow the exercise of state jurisdiction here would undermine the authority of the tribal courts over Reservation affairs and hence would infringe on the right of the Indians to govern themselves.”
39 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Congress has also acted consistently upon the assumption that the States have no power to regulate the affairs of Indians on a reservation. . . . Significantly, when Congress has wished the States to exercise this power it has expressly granted them the jurisdiction which Worcester v. State of Georgia had denied”
16 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.