Phillips Petroleum Company v. Mississippi US’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
44 federal appellate · 24 district · 133 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 244 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably McNally v. Zoning Commission (1993), Ohio v. United States Department of the Interior (1989)
44 federal appellate · 24 district · 133 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.
Relationships
Applies 43 U.S.C. § 1301 (Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act)
Relies on Montana v. United States · Kaiser Aetna v. United States · Shively v. Bowlby · In re Disbarment of Gonzales · The Daniel Ball
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 244 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'it has been long established that the individual [s]tates have the authority to define the limits of the lands held in public trust and to recognize private rights in such lands as they see fit.'”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““At common law, the title and dominion in lands flowed by the tide water were in the King for the benefit of the nation_ Upon the American Revolution, these rights, charged with a like trust, were vested in the original States within their respective borders, subject to the rights surrendered by the Constitution of the United States.” Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Mississippi, 484 U.S. 469, 473-74 , 108 S.Ct. 791, 794 , 98 L.Ed.2d 877, 884 (1988) (quoting Shively v. Bowlby, 152 U.S. 1, 57 , 14 S.Ct. 548, 569 , 38 L.Ed. 331, 352 (1894)).”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he States, upon entry into the Union, received ownership of all lands under waters subject to the ebb and flow of the tide.”
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.