The State of Alabama v. The State of Georgia’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

7 federal appellate · 3 district · 19 state decisions

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 68 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “* * * that portion of its soil which is alternately covered and left bare, as there may be an increase or diminution in the supply of water, and which is adequate to contain it at its average and mean stage during the entire year, without reference to the extraordinary freshets of the winter or spring, or the extreme droughts of the summer or autumn.”

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Owen v. United States · Marret v. United States

2. ““We also agree and decide that this language implies that there is ownership of soil and jurisdiction in Georgia in the bed of the river Chattahoochee, and that the bed of the river is that portion of the soil which is alternately covered and left hare, as there may he an increase or diminution in the supply of water, and which is adequate to contain it at its average and mean stage during the entire year, without reference to the extraordinary freshets of the winter or spring, or the extreme droeights of the summer or autumn. “The western line of the cession on the Chattahoochee river must be traced on the water line of the acclivity of the western bank, and along that bank where that is defined; and in such places on the river where the western bank is not defined, it must be continued up the river on the line of its bed, as that is made by the average and mean stage of the water, as that is expressed in the eonelnsion of the preceding paragraph of this opinion.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Oklahoma v. Texas · Wrathall v. Miller

3. ““If the language of the article had been, ‘beginning on the western bank of the Chattahoochee, and running thence up the river,’ and no more had been said, the middle thread of the river ordinarily, and without any reference to the fact that Georgia was the proprietor of the river, it would have been said to be the dividing line between the two states. But there is added 'running up the said River Chattahoochee and along the western bank thereof. This last controls any uncertainty there may be; for if the first call or object to locate the line is the bank of the river, it is plain that the western limit of Georgia on and along the bank of the river, must be where the bank and the water meet in its bed within the natural channel or passage of the river. The words ‘along the bank,’ added to the words, ‘on the bank,’ distinguish this case from all of those in which courts have had the greatest difficulty where a line was to be fixed when it is on the bank without a call for the stream or along the river, or up or down the river. Angelí 19. Along the bank, is strong and definite enough to exclude the idea that any part of the river or its bed was not to be within the State of Georgia. It controls any legal implication of a contrary character. Such a line, too, satisfies the calls on and along the bank in the navigable and unnavigable parts of the river. In the former, Alabama has all the uses of the river, including the use of the western bank for navigation and commerce, which ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. St. Clair County v. Calhoun County