United States v. Rands’s Empirical Analysis
1967
Citation profile
136 federal appellate · 32 district · 20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 363 later decisions (28 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2022 · most notably Kaiser Aetna v. United States (1979), PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins (1980)
136 federal appellate · 32 district · 20 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedRands v. United States (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 33 U.S.C. § 578 · 33 U.S.C. § 595 · 43 U.S.C. § 1301 (Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act) · 43 U.S.C. § 1311 · 43 U.S.C. § 1314
Relies on Monongahela Navigation Co. v. United States · United States v. Chandler-Dunbar Water Power Co. · Omnia Commercial Co. v. United States · United States v. Virginia Electric & Power Co. · United States v. Sealy, Inc.
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 363 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““a ‘dominant servitude,’ which extends to the entire stream and the stream bed below ordinary high-water mark. The proper exercise of this power is not an invasion of any private property rights in the stream or the lands underlying it, for the damage sustained does not result from taking property from riparian owners within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment but from the lawful exercise of a power to which the interests of riparian owners have always been subject.””
22 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Finally, respondents urge that the Government's position subverts the policy of the Submerged Lands Act, which confirmed and vested in the States title to the lands beneath navigable waters within their boundaries and to natural resources within such lands and waters, together with the right and power to manage, develop, and use such lands and natural resources. However, reliance on that Act is misplaced, for it expressly recognized that the United States retained all its navigational servitude and rights in and powers of regulation and control of said lands and navigable waters for the constitutional purposes of commerce, navigation, national defense, and international affairs, all of which shall be paramount to, but shall not be deemed to include, proprietary rights of ownership * * *. Nothing in the Act was to be construed as the release or relinquishment of any rights of the United States arising under the constitutional authority of Congress to regulate or improve navigation, or to provide for flood control, or the production of power. The Act left congressional power over commerce and the dominant navigational servitude of the United States precisely where it found them.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Zabel v. Tabb · Zabel v. Tabb“"And, in River Rouge, it was recognized that state law may give the riparian owner valuable rights of access to navigable waters good against other riparian owners or against the State itself."”
1 later decision 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.