Missouri v. Lewis’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

55 federal appellate · 35 district · 237 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 554 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Each State . . . may establish one system of courts for cities and another for rural districts, one system for one portion of its territory and another system for another portion. Convenience, if not necessity, often requires this to be done, and it would seriously interfere with the power of a State to regulate its internal affairs to deny to it this right.”

   42 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific Railroad v. Commonwealth · Marchant v. Pennsylyania Railroad

2. ““In the present eases we are not obliged to reason from the probable to the actual, and pass upon the validity of the ordinances complained of, as tried merely by the opportunities which their terms offered, of unequal and unjust discrimination in their administration; for the cases present the ordinances in actual operation, and the facts shown establish an administra tion directed so exclusively against a particular class of persons as to warrant and require the conclusion that, whatever may have been the intent of the ordinances as adopted, they are applied by the public authorities charged with their administration, and thus representing the state itself, with a mind so unequal and oppressive as to amount to a practical denial by the state of that equal pr lection of the laws which is secured to the petitioners, as to all other persons, by the broad and benign provisions of the fourteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States. Though the law itself he fair on its face, and impartial in appearance, yet, if it is applied and administered by publie authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so as practically to make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons in similar circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of equal justice is still within the prohibition of the constitution. * * * The fact of this discrimination is admitted. No reason for it is shown, and the conclusion cannot be resisted that no reason for it exists except hostility t”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. People of New York v. Bennett · Peck v. City of New Orleans