United States v. Conrad Heinszen C’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

72 federal appellate · 38 district · 69 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 342 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “That where an agent, without precedent authority, has exercised, in the name of a principal, a power which the principal had the capacity to bestow, the principal may ratify and affirm the unauthorized act, and thus retroactively give it validity when rights of third persons have not intervened, is so elementary as to need but statement. That the power of ratification as to matters within their authority may be exercised by Congress, state governments, or municipal corporations, is also elementary.”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Purvis v. United States · State Ex Rel. Van Emmerik v. Janklow

2. “As to [the claim] the duties collected were illegal, it is insisted that, for the purpose of testing the validity of the act of Congress, the fact of such collection must be put out of view, and the act ratifying the exaction must be treated as if it were solely an original exercise by Congress of the taxing power. This being done, it is said, reduces the case to the inquiry, had Congress power, years after goods which were entitled to free entry had been brought into the Philippine Islands, to retroactively impose tariff duties upon the consummated act of bringing the goods into that country? But the proposition begs the question for decision, by shutting out from view the potential fact that when the goods were brought into the Philippine Islands there was a tariff in existence under which duties were exacted in the name of the United States.... Moreover, the fallacy which the proposition involves becomes yet more obvious when it is observed that the contention cannot even be formulated without misstating the nature of the act of Congress; in other words, without treating that act as retrospective legislation enacting a tariff, when, on its very face, the act is but an exercise of the conceded power dependent upon the law of agency to ratify an act done on behalf of the United States, which the United States could have originally authorized.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. J. Thomas Zaber, On Behalf Of Himself And All Others Similarly Situated Vs. City Of Dubuque, Iowa · Washington Nat'l Arena v. TREASURER, PR. GEO'S CO.

3. “But if it be conceded that the claim to a return of the moneys paid in discharge of the exacted duties was in a sense a vested right, it in principle, as we have already observed, would be but the character of right referred to by Kent in his Commentaries, where, in treating of the validity of statutes retroactively operating on certain classes of rights, it is said (Vol. 2 pp. 415, 416) The legal rights affected in those cases by the statutes were deemed to have been vested subject to the equity existing against them, and which the statutes recognized and enforced. Goshen v. Stonington, 4 Connecticut 209; Wilkinson v. Leland, 2 Peters, 627 [ 7 L.Ed. 542 ]; Langdon v. Strong, 2 Vermont, 234; Watson v. Mercer, 8 Pe ters, 88 [ 8 L.Ed. 876 ]; 3 Story’s Comm. on the Constitution, 267. Nor does the mere fact that at the time the ratifying statute was enacted this action was pending for the recovery of the sums paid cause the statute to be repugnant to the Constitution. The mere commencement of the suit did not change the nature of the right. Hence again if it be conceded that the capacity to prosecute the pending suit to judgment was in a sense a vested right, certainly also the power of the United States to ratify was, to say the least, a right of as high a character. To arrogate to themselves the authority to divest the right of the United States to ratify is then in reason the assumption upon which the asserted right of the claimants to recover must rest.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 616 F. Supp. 759 - In Re Consolidated United States Atmospheric Testing Litigation