Sanner v. Patton’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 district · 42 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 46 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is also said that ample provision has been made in the act whereby candidates may be nominated, and thus be entitled to have their names placed on the ticket, and that it is the intention of the act that no vote should be cast for a person who was not nominated. If such was the intention, why did not the legislature say so, and why did it say directly the contrary ? What, it may be asked, is there so sacred in the nomination of a candidate for office by a political caucus that a voter should be compelled to vote for a nominee of the caucus or else be deprived of the elective franchise ? . . . The legislature does not possess the power to take away from a resident citizen the right of suffrage unless he has been convicted of an infamous crime. Nor can the legislature do indirectly what they cannot do directly; and yet, if the construction contended for by appellee be the correct one, the voter is deprived of the constitutional right of suffrage. He is deprived of the right of exercising his own choice, and when this right is taken away, there is nothing left worthy of the name of the right of suffrage — the boasted free ballot becomes a delusion. ’ ’”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Barr v. Cardell