Tucker v. Spalding’s Empirical Analysis
80 U.S. 453 · 1871
Citation profile
32 federal appellate · 6 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 79 later decisions (19 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2019 · most notably MARKMAN Et Al. v. WESTVIEW INSTRUMENTS, INC., Et Al. (1996), Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc. (1995)
32 federal appellate · 6 district · 4 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 79 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Whatever may be our personal opinions as to the fitness of a jury as a tribunal to determine the diversity or identity in principle of two mechanical instruments, it cannot be questioned that when the plaintiff, in the exercise of the option which the law gives him, brings his suit in the law in preference to the equity side of the court, that question must be submitted to the jury, if there is so much resemblance as raises the question at all.””
3 later decisions 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.