Sheldon v. Sill’s Empirical Analysis
49 U.S. 441 · 1850
Citation profile
175 federal appellate · 33 district · 15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 530 later decisions (60 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Cannon v. University of Chicago (1979), Christianson v. Colt Industries Operating Corp. (1988)
175 federal appellate · 33 district · 15 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
Relies on William Marbury v. James Madison · United States v. Hudson · Bank of the United States v. Deveaux · United States v. Bevans
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 530 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Courts created by statute can have no jurisdiction but such as the statute confers.”
34 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he judicial Power of the United States”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The political truth is that the disposal of the judicial power (except in a few specified instances) belongs to Congress, and Congress is not bound to enlarge the jurisdiction of the federal courts to every subject in every form which the Constitution might warrant.””
5 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.