Gilmer v. Stone’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

12 federal appellate · 53 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 76 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““While these boards are important agencies in aid of the general religious work of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, neither of them is, in any proper sense, or in the meaning of the 35th section of the act of 1872, a church, congregation or society formed for the purpose of religious worship. The counsel for the plaintiff in error seem to lay stress upon ,the more general words, ‘formed for religious purposes,’ in the forty-second section of the act; but manifestly the other parts of the same section, and previous sections, show that the only corporations intended to be restricted in the ownership of land to ten acres, were those formed for the * * * commonly called benevolent or missionary societies. The reasons of public policy which restrict societies, formed for the purpose of religious worship, in their ownership of real estate, do not apply at all, or, if at all, only with diminished force, to corporations which have no ecclesiastical control of those engaged in religious worship, and cannot prescribe the forms of such worship, nor subject to ecclesiastical discipline those who fail to conform to the rules, usages, or orders of the religious society of which they are members.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Stump v. Sturm

2. ““Of the competency of this evidence there can be no doubt. The purpose of it was to place the court, as far as possible, in the situation in which the testator stood, and thus bring the words employed by him into contact with the circumstances attending the execution of the will. Such proof does not contradict the terms of that instrument, nor tend to wrest the words of the testator from their natural operation. It serves only to identify the institutions described by him (testator), * * * and thus the court is enabled to avail itself of the light which the circumstances, in which the testator was place'd at the time he made the will, would throw upon his intentions. ‘The law is not so unreasonable,’ says Mr. Wigram, ‘as to deny to the reader of an instrument the same light which the writer enjoyed.’ ” Wigram, Wills (2d A. Ed.) 161.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Succession of Tilton

3. ““for the purpose of establishing and conducting Christian missions among the unevangelized of pagan nations and the general diffusion of Christianity, and to assist in sustaining the preaching of the gospel in feeble churches and congregations in connection with the Presbyterian Church in the United States, arid generally to superintend the whole of the Home Missions in behalf of such church.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Stump v. Sturm