Love v. McDonald’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

8 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The federal constitution does not contain an express guarantee that vested rights shall be protected. However, they are fully secured. The provision of the federal constitution prohibiting states from passing laws impairing obligation of contracts has been interpreted generally to embrace only those contracts wherein the subject-matter is property or some object of value; that is, contracts which confer rights that may be asserted in courts of justice. Only those contracts which create in a person or corporation a vested beneficial interest are the objects afforded protection by the prohibition against impairment expressed in Art. 1, § 10 of the Constitution. As was said in Douglas v. Kentucky, 168 U. S. 488 , 42 L. ed. 553, 18 S. Ct. 199 , the provisions of the federal constitution in reference to contracts only inhibit the states from passing laws impairing the obligations of such contracts as relate to property rights, but not to subjects that are purely governmental. In the chapter on Constitutional Law, 6 R. C. L., § 303, there is this statement: ‘In regard to the validity of retroactive legislation, so far as it may affect only expectant or contingent interests, the law seems to be well settled that the power thus to deal with such interests resides in the legislature. Laws enacted for the betterment of judicial pro- ■ cedure and the unfettering of estates so as to bring them into market for sale are usually valid unless they actually impair rights which are vested. It”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Anderson v. Webb

2. ““Whenever any land in this State may hereafter be, or shall have heretofore been, devised by will or conveyed by grant to any person by any language which at common law would have vested in such person an estate in fee tail, then such person who at common law would have been invested with a fee tail estate in said lands, and who under the provisions of Section 1499 of Crawford & Moses Digest of the Statutes of the State of Arkansas, is or shall be invested with a life estate therein, is hereby authorized and empowered to execute oil and gas leases on said land, * * *””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Anderson v. Webb