Newhall v. Sanger’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

39 federal appellate · 28 district · 47 state decisions

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 258 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The words ‘public lands’ are habitually used in our legislation to describe such as are subject to sale or other disposal under general laws.””

   12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Mann v. Tacoma Land Co. · Beecher v. Wetherby

2. ““The opinion, however, examined somewhat at large the grounds on which it should be held that Mexican grants (whether valid or invalid), while under judicial consideration, should be treated as reserved lands. The principal reason was that they were not ‘public lands,’ in the sense of congressional legislation; those terms being habitually used to describe such lands as are subject to sale or other disposal under general laws. The Pacific Railroad acts of 1862 and 1864 only granted, in aid of the railroads to be constructed under them, ‘every alternate section of public land * * * not sold, reserved, or otherwise disposed of by the United States, and to which a pre-emption or homestead claim may not have attached at the time the line of said road is definitely fixed.’ The lands comprised in a Mexican grant, it was held, must be regarded, not as ‘public lands,’ but as ‘reserved lands,’ because, by the treaty with Mexico, all private property was to be respected. And when the act of March 3, 1851, created a board of commissioners to examine all claims to Mexican grants, the thirteenth section declared ‘that all lands the claims to which have been finally rejected by the commissioners in the manner herein provided, or which shall be finally decided to be invalid by the district or supreme court, and all lands the claims to which shall not have been presented to the commissioners within two years after the date of this act, shall be deemed, held, and considered as part of the pub”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Kansas Pacific Railway Co. v. Dunmeyer · Apis v. United States

3. ““It was to be expected that unfounded and fraudulent claims would be presented for confirmation. There was, in the opinion of congress, no mode of separating them from those which were valid without investigation by a competent tribunal; and our legislation was so shaped that no title could be initiated, under the laws of the United States, to lands covered by a Spanish or Mexican.claim, until it was barred by lapse of time or rejected.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Southern Pac. R. v. Brown