Davidson v. New Orleans’s Empirical Analysis
96 U.S. 97 · 1877
Citation profile
70 federal appellate · 44 district · 400 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 960 later decisions (180 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably Daniels v. Williams (1986), Powell v. State of Alabama Patterson (1932)
70 federal appellate · 44 district · 400 state decisions — followed in 48 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
Relies on United States v. Cruikshank · Slaughter-House Cases the Butchers' Benevolent Association of New Orleans v. The Crescent City Live · John Den James Murray and John Kayser v. The Hoboken Land and Improvement Company John Den James B Murray et al. · John Barron John Craig Luke Tiernan John Craig v. Mayor City Council of Baltimore
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 960 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““I think, therefore, we are entitled, under the Fourteenth Amendment, not only to see that there is some process of law, hut ‘due process of law,’ provided by the state law, when a citizen is deprived of his property, and that, in judging what is ‘dire process of law,’ respect must be had to the cause and object of the taking, whether under the taxing power, the power of eminent domain, or the power of assessment for local improvements, or none of these, and if found to be suitable or admissible m the special case, it will be adjudged to be ‘due process of law,’ but if found to be arbitrary, oppressive, and unjust, it may be declared to be not ‘due process of law.’ ””
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Whenever by the laws of a state, or by state authority, a tax, assessment, servitude, or other burden is imposed upon property for the public use, whether it he for the whole state or some more limited portion of the community, and those laws provide for a mode of confirming or contesting the charge thus imposed, in the ordinary courts of justice, with such notice to the person, or such proceeding in regard to the property as is appropriate to the nature of the ease, the judgment in such proceedings cannot be said to deprive the owner of his property without due process of law, however obnoxious it may be to other objections. ’ ’”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A]n erroneous decision of a state court does not deprive the unsuccessful party of his property without due process of law”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.