Lamb v. Davenport’s Empirical Analysis
85 U.S. 307 · 1873
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 3 district · 21 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 54 later decisions (13 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 1976 · most notably Shively v. Bowlby (1894), Williamson v. United States (1908)
6 federal appellate · 3 district · 21 state decisions — followed in 12 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 The Star of Hope
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 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The right of the United States to dispose of her own property is undisputed, and to make rules by which the land of the government that is sold or given away is acknowledged; but, subject to these well known principles, parties in possession iff the soil might make valid contracts even concerning the title predicated upon the hypothesis that they might thereafter lawfully acquire the title, except in cases where congress has imposed restrictions on such contracts.””
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.