Warren v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1923
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently November 2012
12 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 Spurr v. United States · State ex rel. Attorney General v. Hasty · State ex rel. Attorney General v. Lazarus · In re Cutchin · State ex rel. Mitchell v. Medler
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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Now it is true that in the matter of assessing persons, firms and corporations with the license taxes required by law (i. <?., by the ordinances of the city of Hopewell and by statute), the accused, although a ministerial officer, was required to exercise a reasonable judgment of his own as to the law applicable and a reasonable discretion in delaying assessments a reasonable time in order to ascertain the facts relevant to the proper assessments to be made. And it is well settled that, such being the case, if the accused did not act corruptly or with evil intent, but honestly and with reasonable diligence in such matters, even if he was mistaken as to the law applicable, and erred in failing to make such assessments, he could not be regarded as guilty of the offenses specified in the rule against him, * * * ”. 1 Bish. New Cr. Law (8th ed.), section 460(1). “As said in the section of the learned work just cited, ‘One serving in a * * * capacity in which he is required to exercise a judgment of his own is not punishable for a mere error therein, or for a mistake of law. His act to be cognizable criminally, or even civilly, must be wilful and corrupt.’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“the doing of what one ought not to do, the unjust performance of some act which the party had no right or which he had contracted not to do. . . the doing of an act wholly wrongful and unlawful.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“one which is primarily public in its nature, which although not a criminal case is one highly penal in its nature, and one in which the Commonwealth is the party plaintiff.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Johnson v. Woodard
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.