Bacon v. Howard’s Empirical Analysis
61 U.S. 22 · 1857
Citation profile
8 federal appellate · 12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 47 later decisions (11 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 1993 · most notably Order of United Commercial Travelers of America v. Wolfe (1947), Russell v. Todd (1940)
8 federal appellate · 12 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.
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 47 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““By the constitution of the United States, and by the acts of congress organizing the federal courts,-and defining and investing the jurisdiction of these tribunals, the distinction between common-law and equity jurisdiction has been explicitly declared and carefully defined and established. Thus, in section 2, article 3, of the constitution, it is declared that ‘ the judicial power of the United States shall extend to all cases in law and equity arising under this constitution, the laws of the United States,’ etc. In the act of congress * to establish the judicial courts of the United States ’ this distribution of law and equity powers is frequently referred to; and by the sixteenth section of that act, as if to place the distinction between these powers beyond misapprehension, it is provided ‘that suits in equity shall not be maintained in either of the courts of the United States in any case where plain, adequate, and complete remedy may be had at law,’ at the same time affirming and separating the two classes or sources of judicial authority. In every instance in which tins court has expounded the phrases, ‘ proceedings at the common law, and proceedings in equity,’ with reference to the exercise of judicial powers of the courts of the United States, they will be found to have interpreted the former as signifying the application of the definitions and principles and rules of the common law to rights and obligations essentially legal, and the latter as meaning the administ”
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.