The Mayor Recorder Aldermen and Common Council of Georgetown v. The Alexandria Canal Company and William Turnbull’s Empirical Analysis
37 U.S. 91 · 1838
Citation profile
23 federal appellate · 20 district · 39 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 128 later decisions (16 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2015 · most notably In re Debs (1895), Wyandotte Transportation Co. v. United States (1967)
23 federal appellate · 20 district · 39 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.
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 128 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A public nuisance being the subject of criminal jurisdiction, the ordinary and regular proceeding at law is by indictment or information, by which the nuisance may be abated, and the person who caused it may be punished. . . . Besides this remedy at law, it is now settled that a court of equity may take jurisdiction in cases of public nuisance, by an information filed by the attorney general. This jurisdiction seems to have been acted on with great caution and hesitancy.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The Potomac river is a navigable stream, or part of the jus publicum; and any obstruction to its navigation would, upon the most established principles, be a public nuisance. A public nuisance being the subject of criminal jurisdiction, the ordinary and regular proceeding at law is by indictment or information, by which the nuisance may be abated, and the person who caused it may be punished. A court of equity may take jurisdiction in cases of public nuisance, by an information filed by the attorney-general. ■ If any particular individual shall have sustained special damage from the erection of it, he may maintain a private action for such special damage; because, to that extent, he has suffered beyond his portion of injury, in common with the community at large.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Fowler v. Wood“Besides this remedy at law, it is now settled, that a court of equity may take jurisdiction in cases of public nuisance, by an information filed by the Attorney General. This jurisdiction seems to have been acted on with great caution and hesitancy. . . . Yet the jurisdiction has been finally sustained, upon the principle that equity can give more adequate and complete relief than can be obtained at law. Whilst, therefore, ft is'admitted by all that it is confessedly one of delicacy, and accordingly the instances of its exercise are rare, yet it may be exercised in those cakes in which there is imminent danger of irreparable mischief before the tardiness of the law could reach it.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. In re Debs
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.