Upshur County v. Rich’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

45 federal appellate · 26 district · 27 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 202 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Even an appeal from an assessment, if referred to a court and jury, or merely to a court, to be proceeded in according to judicial methods, may become a suit within the act of Congress; but the ordinary acts and doings of assessors, or of appellate boards of assessors, in passing upon matters of mere valuation, appraisement, or proportionate distribution of expense, belong to a different class of governmental functions, executive and administrative in their character, and not appertaining to the judicial department. If an illegal principle of valuation be adopted, or an unconstitutional assessment or tax be made or imposed, or fraud be practiced, it may be examined by one of the judicial methods referred to, and thus become the subject of a suit. * * * The principle to be deduced from these cases is that a proceeding, not in a court of justice, but carried on by executive officers in the exercise of their proper functions, as in the valuation of property for the just distribution of taxes or assessments, is purely administrative in its character, and cannot, in any just sense, be called a suit, and that an appeal in such a case to a board of assessors or commissioners having no judicial powers, and only authorized to determine questions of quantity, proportion and value, is not a suit; but such an appeal may become a suit, if made to a court or tribunal having power to determine questions of law and fact, either with or without a jury, and there are parties litigant to conte”

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Commissioners of Road Improvement District No. 2 v. St. Louis Southwestern Railway Co. · In re Ditch

2. “The term is certainly a very comprehensive one, and is understood to apply to any proceeding in a court of justice, by which an individual pursues that remedy in a court of justice which the law affords him. The modes of proceeding may be various, but if a right is litigated between parties in a court of justice, the proceeding by which the decision of the court is sought is a suit. * * *”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Ward v. Congress Const. Co. · Waha-Lewiston Land & Water Co. v. Lewiston-Sweetwater Irrigation Co.

3. ““But, whatever called, it is not usually a court, nor is the proceeding a suit between, parties; it is a matter of administration, and the duties of the tribunal are administrative, and not judicial in the ordinary sense of that term, though often involving the exercise of quasi judicial functions. Such appeals are not embraced in the removal act. * * * The fact that the board of appeal may swear witnesses does not make the proceeding a suit. Assessors are often empowered to do this without altering the character of their functions.””

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Commissioners of Road Improvement District No. 2 v. St. Louis Southwestern Railway Co. · Ex parte Oklahoma