Hamsher v. Hamsher’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 13 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 16 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. ““It does not appear that the Young Men’s Christian Association of Decatur, Ill., exercises any ecclesiastical control over its members, or prescribes any form of worship' for them, or subjects those who fail to conform to its rules to ecclesiastical discipline. Therefore a limitation upon the extent of its ownership of real estate is not so imperatively demanded by those considerations of public policy which apply to corporations formed for the purpose of publiq worship. We are of the opinion that said association is not subject to the restriction contained in section -42 of the Corporation Act, and that the devise to it of a greater quantity of land than ten acres is not invalid. It follows that the appellant takes nothing as heir, and that his cross-bill was properly dismissed.””

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