Sharber v. Florence’s Empirical Analysis
1938
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 46 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 51 later decisions — most recently January 2018 · most notably Rose v. Doctors Hospital (1990), Cash America International Inc. v. Bennett (2000)
5 federal appellate · 46 state decisions
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 Damselle Howard v. Illinois Central Railroad Company · International Building & Loan Ass'n v. Hardy · State of Texas v. Laredo Ice Co.
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 51 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“When, therefore, a part of a statute is unconstitutional, that fact does not authorize the courts to declare the remainder void also, unless all the provisions are connected in subject-matter, dependent on each other, operating together for the same purpose, or otherwise so connected in meaning that it cannot be presumed the legislature would have passed the one without the other. The constitutional and unconstitutional provisions may even be contained in the same section, and yet be perfectly distinct and separable, so that the first may stand though the last fall. The point is not whether they are contained in the same section, for the distribution into sections is purely artificial; but whether they are essentially and inseparably connected in substance. If, when the unconstitutional portion is stricken out, that which remains is complete in itself, and capable of being executed in accordance with the apparent legislative intent, wholly independent of that which was rejected, it must stand.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[i]n the construction of statutes, if it can be lawfully done, it is the duty of the court to construe a statute so as to render it valid.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“This Court has repeatedly held that if part of an act is declared invalid it does not destroy the entire act, unless the invalid part is so intermingled with all parts of the act as to make it impossible to separate them, and so preclude the presumption that the Legislature would have passed the act anyhow.... It is also clear that, where a statute contains provisions which are legal, and others which are not, effect may be given to the legal provisions by separating them from the illegal. But this rule applies only to a statute where the provisions are separable and not dependent one upon the other; and does not support the contention that that which is inseparable may be separated.”
1 later decision 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.