Gates v. Howell’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

30 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 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““When a particular judgment is directed by the appellate court, the lower court is not acting of its own motion, but in obedience to the order of its superior. What that superior says it shall do, it must do, and that alone. Public interests require that an end shall be put to litigation, and when a given cause has received the consideration of this court, its merits determined, and then remanded with specific directions, the court to which such mandate is directed has no power to do anything but to obey the mandate; otherwise, litigation would never be ended, and the supreme tribunal of the state would be shorn of that authority over inferior tribunals with which it is invested by our fundamental law....””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Rolling

2. ““ ‘[w]here the appellate court remands a cause with directions to enter judgment for the plaintiff in a certain amount, the judgment of the appellate court is a final judgment in the cause and the entry thereof in the lower court is a purely ministerial act. No modification of the judgment so directed can be made, nor may any provision be engrafted on, or taken from it.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Foral