2016 Pa. Super. 34 - Commonwealth v. Derhammer’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 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 2 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “There are exceptions to the [Ex parte ] Siebold, [ 100 U.S. 371 , 25 L.Ed. 717 (1879)] pronouncement that an unconstitutional law is void from the outset. That is, where there are actions taken in justifiable reliance upon a judicial ruling that the statute was constitutional at one point in time, the statute is not always considered a nullity and as if it never existed. See 46 Am.Jur. 2d Constitutional Law § 196; Heilig Estate, 13 Pa. D. & C.3d 1, ; see also Lemon v. Kurtzman, 411 U.S. 192, 199 , 93 S.Ct. 1463 , 36 L.Ed.2d 151 (1973) (limiting its decision in Norton v. Shelby County, 118 U.S. 425, 442 , 6 S.Ct. 1121 , 30 L.Ed. 178 (1886), which reiterated the constitutionally void ab initio doctrine espoused in Siebold by stating, “However appealing the logic of Norton may have been in the abstract, its abandonment reflected our recognition that statutory or even judge-made rules of law are hard facts on which people must rely in making decisions and in shaping their conduct.”); see also Thomas Raeburn White, Commentaries on the Constitution of Pennsylvania, 27-28 (1907) (discussing exceptions to unconstitutionally void ab initio doctrine).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2016 Pa. Super. 283 - Commonwealth v. Ciccone