animals
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 80 U.S. 162 - Reiche v. Smythe · 1871Most cited · 121 citing opinions
Congress, adopting the popular signification of the word 'animals,' applied it to quadrupeds, and placed birds and fowls in a different classification.
How often courts cite the case defining “animals”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “animals” — 121 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.