Totten Administrator v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
92 U.S. 105 · 1875
Citation profile
128 federal appellate · 29 district · 18 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 318 later decisions (19 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2023 · most notably Jencks v. United States (1957), United States v. Reynolds (1953)
128 federal appellate · 29 district · 18 state decisions — followed in 10 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 318 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[P]ublic policy forbids the maintenance of any suit in a court of justice, the trial of which would inevitably lead to the disclosure of matters which the law itself regards as confidential, and respecting which it will not allow the confidence to be violated.”
25 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“brought to recover compensation for services alleged to have been rendered by ... William A. Lloyd, under a contract with President Lincoln, made in July 1861, by which he was to proceed South and ascertain the number of troops stationed at different points in the insurrectionary States, procure plans of forts and fortifications, and gain such other information as might be beneficial to the government of the United States, and report the facts to the PresL dent; for which services he was to be paid $200 a month.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“was undoubtedly authorized during the (Civil) war, as commander-in-chief of the armies of the United States, to employ secret agents to enter the rebel lines and obtain information respecting the strength, resources, and movements of the enemy.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Zweibon v. Mitchell
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.