Mullan v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

16 federal appellate · 4 district · 4 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 68 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The court of claims was of opinion that this section did not apply to the action of the President of the United States. If it be conceded for this purpose that it is applicable to the President (§ 1624, arts. 38 and 53 of the Revised Statutes), we are of the opinion that the President’s action did, in fact, mitigate the previous sentence of the court-martial as approved by the Secretary of the Navy. It may be conceded that there is a technical difference between the commutation of a sentence and the mitigation thereof. The first is a change of a punishment to which a person has been condemned into one less severe, substituting a less for a greater punishment by authority of law. To mitigate a sentence is to reduce or lessen the amount of the penalty or punishment. 1 Bouvier’s Law Dict. 374; 2 Id. 428. “When the President otherwise confirmed the sentence of the Navy Department from absolute discharge from the Navy to reduction in rank and duty for the period of five years on one-half sea pay, he did what in terms he undertook to do; and, by the lessening of the severe penalty of dismissal from the Navy, approved by the Department, reduced and diminished, and therefore mitigated, the sentence which he was authorized to approve and confirm against the appellant, or mitigate in his favor.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Menefee v. Aderhold