State v. Sanders’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 10 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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “It does not apply when the suit is against an officer or agent of the state, and the relief demanded by the suit requires no affirmative official action on the part of the state nor the affirmative discharge of any obligation which belongs to the state in its political capacity, even though the officers or agents who are made defendants disclaim any personal interest in themselves and claim to hold or to act only by virtue of a title of the state and as its agents and servants. Thus it will be found, as illustrative of what has been above said, that all the cases, wherein the rule of immunity from suit against the state, or a subdivision thereof, has been applied and upheld, are those which demanded a money judgment, and wherein the discharge of the judgment, if obtained, would require an appropriation or an expenditure therefrom, which being legislative in its character is a province exclusively of the political departments of the state. And in the less frequent number of cases where no money judgment is demanded, and the rule of immunity is still upheld, it will be found in them that the relief demanded would be, nevertheless, to require of the state or its political subdivision the affirmative performance of some asserted obligation, the nature of which, and the process of its discharge, belong to the state in its political capacity.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Reed v. Evans