Green v. County Board’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

16 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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ ‘A law is “special in a constitutional sense when by force of an inherent limitation it arbitrarily separates some persons, places or things from those upon which, but for such separation, it would operate.” ’ ( 126 Va. 610 ) “Reasonably satisfactory as that definition is, we must still, in each instance, determine if the Act makes an ‘arbitrary separation’ of ‘persons, places or things.’ For as stated by Judge Kelly at p. 610 in Martin v. Commonwealth, supra, whether there has been such an ‘arbitrary separation * * * must in the nature of things depend upon the person [purpose] and subject of the particular act and the circumstances and conditions surrounding its passage.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Standard Drug Co. v. General Electric Co.

2. “applies to all districts and all persons who are similarly situated, and to all parts of the State where like conditions exist. Laws may be made to apply to a class only, and that class may be in point of fact a small one, provided the classification itself be a reasonable and not an arbitrary one, and the law be made to apply to all of the persons belonging to the class without distinction.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Riddleberger v. Chesapeake Western Railway