William Marbury v. James Madison’s Empirical Analysis
5 U.S. 137 · 1803
Citation profile
1,349 federal appellate · 436 district · 1,460 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5,264 later decisions (437 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably United States v. Booker (2004), Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York (1978)
1,349 federal appellate · 436 district · 1,460 state decisions — followed in 50 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 Resler v. Shehee
Cited together with Baker v. Carr · Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer · Buckley v. Valeo · Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics · United States v. Nixon
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 5,264 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”
347 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws, whenever he receives an injury.”
101 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It has been stated at the bar, that the appellate jurisdiction may be exercised in a variety of forms, and that if it be the will of the legislature that a mandamus should be used for that purpose, that will must be obeyed. This is true, yet the jurisdiction must be appellate, not original. It is the essential criterion of appellate jurisdiction, that it revises and corrects the proceedings in a cause already instituted, and does not create that cause. Although, therefore, a mandamus may be directed to courts, yet to issue such a writ to an officer, for the delivery of a paper, is, in effect, the same as to sustain an original action for that paper, and therefore, seems not to belong to appellate, but to original jurisdiction.””
46 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.