The Montello’s Empirical Analysis
87 U.S. 430 · 1874
Citation profile
94 federal appellate · 38 district · 93 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 364 later decisions (41 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2023 · most notably Kaiser Aetna v. United States (1979), Monongahela Navigation Co. v. United States (1893)
94 federal appellate · 38 district · 93 state decisions — followed in 30 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
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 364 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he true test of the navigability of a stream does not depend on the mode by which commerce is, or may be, conducted, nor the difficulties attending navigation.... The capability of use by the public for purposes of transportation and commerce affords the true criterion of the navigability of a river, rather than the extent and manner of that use.”
31 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Those rivers must be regarded as public navigable rivers in law which are navigable in fact. And they are navigable in fact when they are used, or are susceptible of being used, in their ordinary condition, as highways for commerce, over which trade and travel are or may be conducted in the customary modes of trade and travel on water.”
27 later decisions quote this exact passage“[T]here are but few of our fresh water rivers which did not originally present serious obstructions to an uninterrupted navigation. In some cases, ... they may be so great while they last as to prevent the use of the best instrumentalities for carrying on commerce, but the vital and essential point is whether the natural navigation of the river is such that it affords a channel for useful commerce. If this be so, the river is navigable in fact, although its navigation may be encompassed with difficulties by reason of natural barriers, such as rapids and sandbars.”
2 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.