United States v. Fisher’s Empirical Analysis
1805
Citation profile
188 federal appellate · 45 district · 91 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 596 later decisions (108 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2024 · most notably International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States (1977), Consumer Product Safety Commission v. GTE Sylvania, Inc. (1980)
188 federal appellate · 45 district · 91 state decisions — followed in 25 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 596 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[w]here the mind labours to discover the design of the legislature, it seizes every thing from which aid can be derived.”
45 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It is undoubtedly a well established principle in the exposition of statutes, that every part is to be considered, and the intention of the legislature to be extracted from the whole. It is also true, that where great inconvenience will result from a particular construction, that construction is to be avoided, unless the meaning of the legislature be plain; in which ease it must be obeyed.” 2 L.Ed. at 313 . (Emphasis supplied.)”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“‘‘Whenever any person indebted to the United States is insolvent, or whenever the estate of any deceased debtor, in the hands of the executors or administrators, is insufficient to pay all the debts due from the deceased, the debts due. to the United States shall be first satisfied; and the priority hereby established shall extend as well to cases in which a debtor, not having sufficient property to pay all Ms debts, makes a voluntary assignment thereof, or in which the estate and effects of an absconding, concealed, or absent debt- or are attached by process of law, as to cases in which an act of bankruptcy is committed.””
4 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.