Gilman v. Williams’s Empirical Analysis
1859
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 1 district · 18 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently February 1953
3 federal appellate · 1 district · 18 state decisions — followed in 11 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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““But how could they be in the custody of the law, unless the deputy marshal had a lawful right to take them into his custody? The idea that an unlawful custody of property can be the custody of the law is simply absurd, not to say preposterous. How it can be imagined that a deputy marshal or any other executive officer of the district court of the United States can illegally seize the property of a citizen, property outside of, and beyond the purview of his writ, and yet claim to hold it in the custody of the law by virtue of such illegal seizure, is beyond comprehension. It may be asked, who shall decide whether his custody is lawful or not? The answer is suggested by the statement of the proposition, viz.: any judicial tribunal competent to try the right or title to property, the claim to which may be disputed. . . . “. . . When property is lawfully taken, by virtue of legal process, it is in the custody of the law, and not otherwise. But it is monstrous to assume that the executive officer of any court can unlawfully seize property with or without process, no matter which, and then a claim can be set up that the custody which he may acquire, whether legal or not, is the custody of law, and hence sacred in his keeping, and to which he may arbitrarily apply the maxim, ‘noli me tangere.’ That day has gone by.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage““When property is lawfully taken, by virtue of legal process, it is in the custody of tbe law, and not otherwise.” Gilman v. Williams, 7 Wis. 329 , 76 Am. Dec. 219 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.