Ex Parte Stollenwerck’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

24 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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Courts are not supposed to be ignorant of that which everybody knows; and everybody in this state knows that drug stores .are not limited in their stock in trade to drugs only; that they carry tobacco, cigars, candies, soaps, toilet articles, and the like, as well as medicines and drugs, and that, in the absence of local laws, they are kept open on Sunday, and sell on Sunday such articles as they carry in trade, and that it has never heretofore been deemed a violation of the criminal statute to do so. Such has been the contemporaneous construction of the statute, for 50 years, by the officers charged with the enforcement of the laws, and by the people, who are charged with observing them. “It may be that the sale of any article in a drug store on Sunday other than drugs, or medicines, ought to be prohibited by a criminal statute; but the fact remains that such sales, of and in themselves, are not now so prohibited, and have not been, for 50 years; and, moreover, what the law ought to be is a question for the Legislature and not for the courts.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. 17 Ala. App. 624 - Whittaker v. State · City of Birmingham v. Tomberlin