Ward v. Sweeney’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

8 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Neither is it necessary to decide whether, in any case, a court of equity may intervene by injunction to protect one or the other of contending claimants for an office in possession and enjoyment thereof. On that subject the states differ radically. . . . (Citations.) Suffice it to say upon the general subject that it is a field which courts of equity should enter with their drastic injunctions with great hesitation. . ■. . The law has provided machinery by the orderly progress of which the election and certification of public officers are to be had, and to those tribunals has delegated both the authority and power to act. If that machinery is inadequate to protect the rights of the people, it is for them, through the medium of their legislature, to correct its defects; and neither the authority nor the duty is upon the courts to seek to supply them. The legislature has not said that, in case of a contest in the forms prescribed by statute, nor even in case of proceedings by quo warranto, the officer whom the machinery of the law has declared by its certificate entitled to the office shall refrain from exercising its functions, and for a court to assume to so declare trenches closely upon the function of the legislature. . . . We do not say that a court may not protect him who by the statutory machinery is placed in the office against violent disturbance or usurpation by another having not the prima facie right, but that it must be a clear and urgent case in which the judici”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State ex rel. Baxter v. City of Superior

2. ““If a person, on tbe facts alleged, be clearly entitled to a particular remedy, and there be reasonable ground to apprehend tbe facts may be established by proof, and, without a temporary restraining order preserving tbe status quo till the termination of tbe litigation, tbe purpose of the action will be entirely defeated, such temporary restraint should be applied under such circumstances as to reasonably protect all parties to tbe litigation.” Ward v. Sweeney, 106 Wis. 60 , 82 N. W. 174 .”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Chain Belt Co. v. Von Spreckelsen