Ewell v. Daggs’s Empirical Analysis
108 U.S. 143 · 1883
Citation profile
86 federal appellate · 20 district · 197 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 392 later decisions (25 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2013 · most notably Home Building & Loan Ass'n v. Blaisdell (1934), United States v. Morgan (1939)
86 federal appellate · 20 district · 197 state decisions — followed in 35 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 Ex parte McCardle · Steamship Company v. Joliffe · Harris v. Runnels · Curtis and Others v. . Leavitt
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 392 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“... Independent of the nature of the forfeiture as a penalty, which is taken away by a repeal of the act, the more general and deeper principle on which they are to be supported is, that the right of a Defendant to avoid his contract is given to him by statute, for purposes of its own, and not because it affects the merits of the obligation; and that whatever the statute gives, under such circumstances, as long as it remains in feiri, and not realized by having passed them to a completed transaction, may, by a subsequent statute, be taken away. It is a privilege that belongs to the remedy, and forms no element in the rights that inhere in the contract. The benefit of which he has received is the consideration of the contract, which, contrary to law, he actually made, is just ground for imposing upon him, by subsequent legislation, the liability which he intended to incur....”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““All that can be meant by the term, according to any legal usage, is that the court of law will not lend its aid to enforce the performance of a contract which appears to have been entered into by both the contracting parties for the express purpose of carrying into effect that which is prohibited by the law of the land.” (Broom’s Legal Maxims, 732.)”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““A distinction is made between acts which are mala in se which are generally regarded as absolutely void, in the sense that no right or claim can be derived from them; and acts which are mala prohibita, which are void or voidable, according to the nature and effect of the act prohibited.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.