Mills v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1939
Citation profile
31 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions — most recently December 2019 · most notably Fleming v. State (1977), Felix v. State (1999)
31 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 McIntyre v. McIntyre · Seaboard Air-Line Railway v. Randolph · McLendon v. Reynolds Grocery Co. · Rogers v. State · Livingston v. Taylor
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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The aim of the law is justice. It gives to the trial judge a weapon which it expects him to use in proper cases, — the power to grant a new trial in order to accomplish the high purpose of the law. The discretion to grant a new trial is entrusted to him and to him alone. This great power given to him by the law is not an arbitrary discretion, of course, but a judicial discretion, placed in the hands of one whom the law regards as not only skilled in her service, but who has an eye single to the great object for which courts are established — to administer justice according to law. When it appears to his judicial conscience that a verdict is contrary to the evidence or without evidence to support it, he should grant a new trial....”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“By the express terms of the Constitution of Georgia, the Supreme Court [and Court of Appeals] is a court for the correction of errors of law only. Art. 6, sec. 2, par. 5 (Code § 2-3005) [now Code Ann. § 2-3704]. We can not undertake to correct errors of fact. We are prohibited from so doing, and can only decide law questions. But no such limitation is placed on the judges of the superior court... Ours is the function merely to see that the law is followed. Theirs is the solemn responsibility to see to it that justice is administered according to the evidence as well as the law.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[w]e can not undertake to correct errors of fact. We are prohibited from so doing, and can only decide law questions. But no such limitation is placed on the judges of the superior [or, in this case, state] court.... Ours is the function merely to see that the law is followed. Theirs is the solemn responsibility to see to it that justice is administered according to the evidence as well as the law.... A judge of the superior [or state] court has authority which [the Supreme Court and likewise this Court] [do] not possess.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.