Atherton v. Fowler’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

29 federal appellate · 10 district · 69 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 177 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is not to be presumed that Congress intended in the remote regions where these settlements are made to invite forcible invasion of the premises of another in order to confer the gratuitous right of preference of purchase on the invaders. In the parts of the country where these pre-emptions are usually made, the protection of the law to rights of person and property is generally but imperfect under the best of circumstances. It cannot, therefore, be believed, without the strongest evidence, that Congress has extended a standing invitation to the strong, the daring, and the unscrupulous, to dispossess by force the weak and the timid from actual improvements on the public land, in order that the intentional trespasser may secure by these means the preferred right to buy the land of the government when it comes into market. * * * Does the policy of the pre-emption law authorize a stranger to thrust these men out of their houses, seize their improvements, and settle exactly where they were settled,- and by these acts acquire the initiatory right of pre-emption? The generosity by which Congress gave the' settler the right of pre-emption was not intended to give him the benefit of another man’s labor, and authorize him to turn that man and his family out of their home. It did not propose to give its bounty to settlements obtained by violence at the expense of others. The right to make a settlement was to be exercised on unsettled land; to make improvements on unimproved land. To”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Mower v. Fletcher · United States v. La Chappelle

2. ““Among the things which the law required of a pre-emptor, and the principal things required of him to secure his right, were: (1) To make a settlement on the land in person. (2) To inhabit and improve the same. (3) To erect a dwelling house thereon.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Lyle v. Patterson · United States v. Yankee Fuel Co.

3. ““ It is not to be presumed that Congress, intended, in the remote regions where these settlements are made, to invite forcible invasion of the premises of another, in order to confer the gratuitous right of preference of purchase on the invaders. In parts of the country where these preemptions are usually made, the protection of the law to rights of person and property is generally but imperfect under the best of circumstances. It cannot, therefore, be believed, without the strongest evidence, that Congress has extended a standing invitation to the strong, the daring and the unscrupulous to dispossess by force the weak and the timid from actual improvements on the public lands, in order that the intentional trespasser may secure by these means the preferred right to buy the land of the. Government when it comes into market.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Del Monte Mining & Milling Co. v. Last Chance Mining & Milling Co.