Erstein v. Rothschild’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 federal appellate · 3 district ·

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

1. ““ ‘The conformity is required to be’ as near as may be, ‘not as near as may be possible, or as near as may be practicable. This indefiniteness may have been suggested by a purpose; it devolved upon the judges to be affected the duty of construing and deciding, and gave them the power to reject, as Congress doubtless expected they would do, any subordinate provisions in such state statutes which, in their judgment, would unwisely incumber the administration of the law, or tend to defeat the ends of justice, in their tribunals. While the act of Congress is to a large extent mandatory, it is also to some extent only directory and advisory.’ The act of Congress, at any rate, does not require the adoption, with the local statutes, of the local interpretation which may have been put upon them, or which may, from time to time, be enforced. It must be held that the body of the local law thus adopted in general must be construed in the courts of the United States in the light of their own system of jurisprudence, as defined by their own Constitution as tribunals, and of other acts of Congress on the same subject. It can hardly be supposed that it was the intent of this legislation to place the courts of the United States in each state, in reference to their own practice and procedure, upon the footing merely of subordinate state courts, required to look from time to time to the Supreme Court of the state- for authoritative rules for their guidance in those details. To do so would be, ”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Phelps v. Oaks · Hughey v. Sullivan

2. ““I think the practice, pleadings, and forms and modes of proceeding in civil causes, mentioned in section 914, are confined to these established b.v the statutes of the state, and do not include modes of procedure established by judicial construction of common-law remedies. Whenever general principles of law are involved, the federal courts may exercise an independent judgment. By the judiciary act of 1789 (Rev. St. § 7211, ‘the laws of the several states shall be regarded as rules of decision in trials at common law in the courts of the United States’; but it has never been held, in construing this section, that the judicial decisions of the several states upon questions of general law were obligatory upon the federal courts.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Wall v. Chesapeake & O. Ry. Co. · Webb v. Southern Ry. Co.

3. ““It must: bo conceded that the supreme court of Michigan, in numerous decisions, have declared that, the statutory proceedings In attachments are stricti juris, that they are proceedings in rem, and that the affidavit is jurisdictional. It follows that in the local jurisdiction of that: state an affidavit defedlve in substance is not the subject of amendment, as without a sufficient affidavit there is no jurisdiction In the court, and the writ of attachment is void.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. O'Connell v. Reed