McArthur v. Scott’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

94 federal appellate · 23 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 442 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““For many reasons, not the least of which are that testators usually have in mind the actual enjoyment rather than the technical ownership of their property, and that sound policy as well as practical convenience requires that titles should be vested at the earliest period, it has long been a settled rule of construction in the courts of England and America that estates, legal or equitable, given by will, should always be regarded as vesting immediately, unless the testator has by very clear words manifested an intention that they should be contingent upon a future event.””

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Brigham v. Peter Bent Brigham Hospital · Gardner v. Vanlandingham

2. ““The general rule in equity, in accordance with the fundamental principles of justice, is that all persons interested in the object, of a suit, and whoso rights will be directly affected by the decree, must be made parties to the suit. Exceptions to this rule have been admitted, from considerations of necessity or of paramount convenience, when some of the persons interested are out of the jurisdiction or not in being, or when the persons interested are too numerous to he all brought in. But in every case there .must be such parties before the court as to insure a fair trial of the issue in behalf of all. The plaintiffs in the present case, being as yet unborn, could not, of course, have been made actual parties to the suit in which the decree setting aside the will of their grandfather was rendered: and the question remaining to be considered is whether there was such a virtual representation of their interests that they are bound by the decree. This question cannot be satisfactorily or intelligibly treated without first recapitulating the facts.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Franklin Savings Bank v. Taylor · Reed v. Alabama & G. Iron Co.

3. ““The rule of the common law, by which an estate devised must in all events vest with a life or lives in being and 21 years afterwards, has reference to time and not to persons. Even the ‘life or lives in being’ have no reference to the persons who are to take, for the testator is allowed to select, as the measure of time, the lives of any persons now in existence; and the ‘21 years afterwards’ are not regulated by the birth of the coming of age of any person, for tlioy begin, not with a birth, but with a death, and are 21 years in gross, without regard to the life, or to the coming of age, of any person soever.” 1”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Dahlgren v. Pierce