Faucette v. Gerlach’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

29 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 29 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ ‘An officer de facto is one who by some color of right is in possession of an office and for the time being performs its duties with public acquiescence, though having no right in fact. His color of right may come from an election or appointment made by some officer or body having colorable but no actual right to make it; or made in such disregard of legal requirements as to be ineffectual in law; or made to fill the place of an officer illegally removed; or made in favor of a party not having the legal qualifications; or it may come from public acquiescence in the officer holding without performing the precedent conditions, or holding over under claim of right after his legal right has been terminated; or possibly from public acquiescence alone when accompanied by such circumstances of official reputations as are calculated to induce people, without inquiry, to submit to or invoke official action on the supposition that the person claiming the office is what he assumes to be.’ Cooley on Constitutional Limitations (7 ed.), pages 897 and 898. Continuing, the learned author said: ‘But for the sake of order and regularity, and to prevent confusion in the conduct of public business and insecurity of private rights, the acts of officers de facto are not suffered to be questioned because of the want of legal authority except by some direct proceeding instituted for the purpose by the State or by some one claiming the office de jure, or except when the person himself attempts to b”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Roberts

2. ““A person who enters into an office and undertakes the performance of the duties thereof by virtue of an election or appointment, is an officer de facto, though he was ineligible at the time he was elected or appointed, or has subsequently become disabled to hold the office. Indeed, it is settled by a current of authority almost unbroken for over 500 years in England and this country, that ineligibility to hold an office does not prevent the ineligible incumbent, if in possession under color of right and authority, from being an officer de facto with respect to his official acts, in so far as third persons are concerned.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Pennington v. Oliver