Powell v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

51 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 53 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “". . . The manufacture, sale and keeping with intent to sell, may all alike be prohibited by the legislature, if in their judgment the protection of the public from injury or fraud requires it. To deny the authority of the legislature to do so, is to attack all that is vital in the police power. . . . “The fact that the prohibited substances, in a pure state, may be wholesome and not injurious, is irrelevant in a judicial inquiry. Their wholesomeness will not render the act unconstitutional. The statute is intended to prevent fraud and protect the public health by prohibiting the manufacture and sale of substances and compounds which furnish the temptation to commit the former, and which may be injurious to the latter. As was said by the supreme court of Missouri, in State v. Addington, 77 Mo. 110 , the position, that to render the law unconstitutional the prohibited articles must be unwholesome, would utterly overthrow the police power of the state — overthrow every law, the wisdom of which could not bear the test of scrutiny.” (pp. 294, 295.)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Carolene Products Co. v. Mohler