Commonwealth v. Sanderson’s Empirical Analysis
1938
Citation profile
17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently December 2012
17 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 Smith v. Bryan · Jones v. Rhea · City of Richmond v. Drewry-Hughes Co. · South East Public Service Corp. v. Commonwealth · Saville v. Virginia Railway & Power Co.
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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘It is contended that the construction insisted upon by the plaintiff in error is violative of the spirit or reason of the law. The argument would seem to concede that the contention is within the letter of the law. We hear a great deal about the spirit of the law, but the duty of this court is not to make law, but to construe it; not to wrest its letter from its plain "meaning in order to conform to what is conceived to be its spirit, in order to subserve and promote some principle of justice and equality which it is claimed the letter of the law has violated. . It is our duty to take the words which the legislature has seen fit to employ and give to them their usual and ordinary signification, and having thus ascertained the legislative intent, to give effect to it, unless it transcends the legislative power as limited by the Constitution.’ ””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““In South East Public Service Corporation v. Commonwealth, 165 Va. 116 , 181 S. E. 448, 452 , Mr. Justice Eggleston quotes with approval this statement of the law from Smith v. Bryan, 100 Va. 199 , 40 S. E. 652 , applicable in such cases: “ ‘So, also, the practical construction given to a statute by public officials, and acted upon by the people, is not only to be considered, but, in cases of doubt, will be regarded as decisive. It is allowed the same effect as a course of judicial decision. The legislature is presumed to be cognizant of such construction, and, when long continued, in the absence of legislation evincing a dissent, the court will adopt that construction.’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Anglin v. Joyner
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.