Clouse v. Clouse’s Empirical Analysis
1948
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently May 2008
22 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Sarah Fall v. Elizabeth Eastin · Carpenter v. Strange · Taylor v. Taylor · Toncray v. Toncray · Carter v. Carter
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.
““In the first place, it is well established that a court of one state is without jurisdiction to pass title to lands lying wholly in another state. The local court cannot by its decree bind the land, and a decree of foreclosure, pursuant to pleadings in this cause, . . . . It is a well established principle of international law, ‘that a foreign court cannot, by its (sic) judgment or decree, pass the title to land situate in another country.’ Story’s Conflict of Laws, sec. 543. It is certainly true, that a court of equity may entertain a bill for the specific performance of a contract respecting land situate in a foreign country, if the parties are resident within the territorial jurisdiction of the court. In such case, although the court cannot bind the land itself by the decree, it can bind the conscience of the party in regard to the land, and enforce him, by process against his person, to perform his agreement. But the decree is merely in personam, and not in rem. Still, the want of power to act upon the land, or to enforce the decree in rem, is no objection to the jurisdiction to act upon the person, and in that mode compel an execution of the contract according to equity and good conscience.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“In a recent work on Conflict of Laws by Joseph H. Beale, Volume One, page 424, it is said: “A refusal of the defendant to make a conveyance in obedience to a decree therefore deprives the decree of any effect. An appointment by the court of a master or committee to give a deed of the land after the defendant’s refusal to do so, or in the absence of an order to him to do so, will not cure this defect. (Italics ours.) “Since a court cannot affect the title to foreign land it will not construe a conveyance of such land.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Roberts v. Roberts
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.