Boyer v. Garrett’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 federal appellate · 4 district · 5 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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The contention of plaintiffs is that, notwithstanding this equality of treatment, the rule providing for segregation is violative of the provisions of the federal Constitution. The District Court dismissed the complaint on the authority of Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 , 16 S.Ct. 1138 , 41 L.Ed. 256 ; and the principal argument made on appeal is that -the authority of Plessy v. Ferguson has been so weakened by subsequent decisions that we should no longer consider it as binding. We do not think, however, that we are at liberty thus to disregard a decision of the Supreme Court which that court has not seen fit to overrule and which it expressly refrained from reexamining, although urged to do so, in the very recent case of Sweatt v. Painter, [ 339 U.S. 629 ] 70 S.Ct. 848 [ 94 L.Ed. 1114 ]. It is for the Supreme Court, not us, to overrule its decisions or to hold them outmoded.””

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Briggs v. Elliott · Lonesome v. Maxwell