Terrett v. Taylor’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

12 federal appellate · 42 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 123 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““A private corporation created by the Legislature may lose its franchises by a misuser or a nonuser of them; and they may be resumed by the government under a judicial judgment upon a quo warranto to ascertain and enforce the forfeiture. This is the common law of the land, and is a tacit condition annexed to the creation of every such corporation.” Terrett v. Taylor, 9 Cranch, 43 , 3 L. Ed. 650 .”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Held v. Crosthwaite · State v. Dilbeck

2. ““ Be, however, the general authority of the legislature as to the subject of religion, as it may, it will require other arguments to establish the position that, at .the Revolution, all the public property acquired by the Episcopal churches, under the sanction of the laws, became the property of the State. Had the property thus acquired been originally granted by the State or the King, there might have been some color (and it would have been but a color) for such an extraordinary pretension. But the property was, in fact and in law, generally purchased by the parishioners or acquired by the benefactions of pious donors. The title thereto was indefeasibly vested in the churches, or rather in their legal agents. It was not in the power of the crown to seize or assume it; nor of the Parliament itself to destroy the grants, unless by the exercise of a power the most arbitrary, oppressive and unjust, and endured only because it could not be resisted. . . . Nor are we able to perceive any sound reason why the church lands escheated or devolved upon the State by the Revolution any more than the property of any other corporation created by the royal bounty omestablished by the legislature.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Municipality of Ponce v. Roman Catholic Apostolic Church in Porto Rico

3. “But that the legislature can repeal statutes creating private corporations, or confirming to them property already acquired under the faith of previous laws, and by such repeal can vest the property of such corporations exclusively in the state, or dispose of the same to such purposes as they may please, without the consent or default of the corpora-tors, we are not prepared to admit; and we think ourselves standing upon the principles of natural justice, upon the fundamental laws of every free government, upon the spirit and the letter of the constitution of the United States, and upon the decisions of most respectable judicial tribunals in resisting such a doctrine.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Household Finance Corp. v. Carroll (In Re Carroll)