Thompson v. Whitman’s Empirical Analysis
85 U.S. 457 · 1873
Citation profile
100 federal appellate · 34 district · 296 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 651 later decisions (79 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2022 · most notably Insurance Corp. of Ireland v. Compagnie Des Bauxites De Guinee (1982), Albright v. Oliver (1994)
100 federal appellate · 34 district · 296 state decisions — followed in 47 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 651 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) “Neither the constitutional provision that full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state, nor the act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof, prevents an inquiry into the jurisdiction of the. court by which a judgment offered in evidence was rendered.” (2) “The record of a judgment rendered in another state may be contradicted as to the facts necessary to give the court jurisdiction; and, if it be shown that snch facts did not exist, the record will ho a nullity, notwithstanding it may recite that they did exist.” (8) “Want of jurisdiction may be shown, either as to the subject-matter or the person, or, in proceedings in rem, as to the thing.””
10 later decisions quote this exact passage“The constitution did not mean to confer any new power on the states, but simply to regulate the effect of their acknowledged jurisdiction over persons and things within their territory. It did not make the judgments of the states domestic judgments to all intents and purposes, but only gave a general validity, faith and credit to them as evidence. No execution can be issued upon such judgments without a new suit in the tribunals of other states, and they enjoy, not the right of priority or privilege or lien which they have in the state where they are pronounced, but that only which the lex fori gives to them by its own laws, in their character of foreign judgments.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A] judgment may be attacked in a collateral proceeding by showing that the court had no jurisdiction of the person, or, in proceedings in rem, no jurisdiction of the thing.”
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.