Russell v. Allen’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

59 federal appellate · 7 district · 143 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 260 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““A charity, in the legal sense, may be more fully defined as a gift, to be applied consistently with existing laws, for the benefit of an indefinite number of persons, either by bringing their minds or hearts under the influence of education or religion, by relieving their bodies from disease, suffering or constraint, by assisting them to establish themselves in life, or by erecting or maintaining publie buildings or works or otherwise lessening the burdens of government. It is immaterial whether the purpose is called charitable in the gift itself, if it is so described as to show that it is charitable in its nature.””

   11 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Girard Trust Co. v. Russell · Bauer v. Myers

2. ““And the only cases in which this court has followed the decision in Baptist Association v. Hart have, like it, arisen in the state of Virginia, by the decisions of whose higher court charities, except in certain eases specified by statute, are not upheld to any greater extent than other trusts.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Miller v. Ahrens · McCue v. Northwestern Mut. Life Ins.

3. “"They are construed as valid-when possible, and are often upheld where private trusts would fail. A gift in trust for a charity not existing at the date of the gift and the beginning, of whose existence is uncertain, or which is to take effect upon a contingency that probably will not happen within a life or lives in being and twenty-one years afterwards, is valid if there is no gift of the property meanwhile to or for the benefit of any private person. In consequence of such favor, gifts of this character are sustained, though vaguely expressed, and when a gift is clearly for a charitable use, the trustees named therein take the legal estate in fee, though the deed does not in terms run to their heirs and assigns; and though the instrument of gift makes no provision for the conveyance to trustees, the donated property becomes immediately charged with the trust in the hands of either the executors or heirs. Equity will not permit these trusts to fail because its particular purposes are uncertain, or for want of a trustee, though no existing donee is named, from which it results at common law that though the gift to a charitable use is to a voluntary association or an unincorporated society which is uncertain, indefinite, and fluctuating in its membership, the court will nevertheless, under the common-law rule, at least uphold it and appoint a trustee to take and administer the fund according to the terms of the grant.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Su Lee v. Peck