Reiche v. Smythe’s Empirical Analysis
80 U.S. 162 · 1871
Citation profile
22 federal appellate · 6 district · 27 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 121 later decisions (20 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2007 · most notably Caminetti v. United States (1917), Crawford v. Burke (1904)
22 federal appellate · 6 district · 27 state decisions — followed in 14 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.
Relationships
Relies on Wheeler v. Harris
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 121 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““If it be true that it is the duty of the court to ascertain the meaning of the Legislature from the words used in the statute and the subject-matter to which it relates, there is an equal duty to restrict the meaning of general words, whenever it is found necessary to do so, in order to carry out the legislative intention.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Congress having, therefore, defined the word in one act, so as to limit its application, how can it be contended that the definition shall be enlarged in the next aet on the same subject, when there is no language used indicating an intention to produce such a result? Both acts are in pari materia, and it will be presumed that if the same word be used in both, and a special meaning were given it in the first act, that it was intended it should receive the same interpretation in the latter aet, in the absence of anything to show a contrary intention.””
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.