Smith v. Stevens’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 federal appellate · 3 district · 29 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 58 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““This act vested the title of the United States to the lands which the treaty had set apart for the use of the half-breeds in the reserves, if living, or, if dead, in their heirs, and declared void all prior contracts for their sale, and forbade any future disposition of them, except by the Secretary of the Interior on the request of the party interested.' There is no ambiguity in the act, or is it requisite to extend the words of the act beyond their plain meaning in order to arrive at the intention of the Legislature. It was considered by Congress to be necessary in case the reserves should be desirous of relinquishing the occupation of their lands that some method of disposing of them should be adopted which would be a safeguard against their own improvidence; and the power of Congress to impose a restriction on the right of alienation in order to accomplish this object cannot be questioned. Without this power, it is easy to see, there would be no way of preventing the Indians from being wronged in contracts for the sale of their lands, and the history of our country affords abundant proof that it is at all times difficult, by the most careful legislation, to protect their interests against the superior capacity and adroitness of their more civilized neighbors. It is manifestly the purpose of Congress, in conferring the authority to sell on the Secretary of the Interior, to save the lands of the reserves from the cupidity of the white race; and, if the provisions of the tr”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Pickering v. Lomax · Stevens v. Elliott

2. ““Whereas by the sixth article of a treaty made and concluded at the City of St. Louis in the State of Missouri, on the third day of June, eighteen hundred and twenty-five, between the United States of America and the Kansas nation of Indians, there was reserved from the lands ceded by said treaty to the United States by said Kansas nation of Indians, one mile square of land for each of the half-breeds of the Kansas nation named in the said sixth article, which land has been surveyed and allotted to each of the said half-breeds in the order in which they are named in, and in accordance with, the provisions of the said sixth article of said treaty: therefore, Be it enacted by the Senate and House, of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all the title, interest and estate of the United States is hereby vested in the said reservees who are now living, to the land reserved, set apart and allotted to them respectively by the said sixth article of said treaty; and in case any of the said reservees named in the said sixth article are deceased and leaving heirs, then all the title, interest or estate of the United States to the land allotted to such deceased reservees, is hereby vested and confirmed in such persons as shall by the Secretary of the Interior be decided to be the heirs of such deceased reservees; but, nothing herein shall be construed to give any force, efficacy or binding effect to any contract, in writing or otherwise, for the sal”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 527 F. Supp. 611 - Dennison v. Topeka Chambers Industrial Development Corp.

3. ““There is no ambiguity in the Act, nor is it requisite to extend the words of it beyond their plain meaning in order to arrive at the intention of the Legislature. It was considered by Congress to be necessary, in case the reservees should be desirous of relinquishing the occupation of their lands, that some method of disposing of them should be adopted which would be a safeguard against their own improvidence.... It was, manifestly, the purpose of Congress, in conferring the authority to sell (on the Secretary of the Interior), to save the lands of the reservees from the cupidity of the white race.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 527 F. Supp. 611 - Dennison v. Topeka Chambers Industrial Development Corp.