United States v. Worrall’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

15 federal appellate · 5 district · 12 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 59 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “If, indeed, the United States can be supposed, for a moment, to have a common law, it must, I presume, be that of England; and yet, it is impossible to trace when, or how, the system was adopted or introduced. With respect to the individual states, the difficulty does not occur. When the American colonies were first settled by our ancestors, it was held, as well by the settlers, as by the judges and lawyers of England, that they brought hither, as a birth-right and inheritance, so much of the common law, as was applicable to their local situation, and change of circumstances. But each colony judged for itself, what parts of the common law were applicable to its new condition.... The common law, therefore, of one state, is not the common law of another; but the common law of England is the law of each state, so far as each state has adopted it.... Now, the United States did not bring [the common law] with them from England; the constitution does not create it; and no act of congress has assumed it.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Washington Legal Foundation v. United States Sentencing Commission · 367 Pa. Super. 108 - Commonwealth v. Coleman

2. “[t]he phrase “common law,” found in this clause, is used in contradistinction to equity, and admiralty, and maritime jurisprudence. The constitution had declared, in the third article, “that the judicial power shall extend to all cases in law and equity arising under the constitution, the laws of- the United States, and treaties made or' which shall be made under their authority,” &c. and to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, It is well known, that in civil causes, in courts of equity and admiralty, juries do not intervene, and that courts of equity use the trial by jury only in extraordinary eases to inform the conscience of the. court. When, therefore, we find that the amendment requires- that the right of trial by jury shall be preserved in suits at common law, the natural conclusion is, that this 'distinction was present to the minds of the framers of the amendment. By common laio, they meant what'the constitution denominated in the third article “law,” not merely suits, which the common law recognized among its old and settled proceedings, but suits in which legal rights were to be ascertained and determined, in contradistinction to those where equitable rights alone were recognized, and equitable remedies were administered; or where, as in the admiralty, a.mixture of public law, and of maritime law and equity was often found in the same suit. Probably there were few, if any, states in the union, in which some new legal remedies differing from the old comm”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. SFF-TIR, LLC v. Stephenson