Johnson v. Darnell’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

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

1. ““Although the original Constitution authorized the General Assembly to fix election dates, quite clearly the injunction against members of the General Assembly ‘being appointed or elected to any civil office’ was written at a time when the newly elected group of Senate and House members would immediately supersede those who had served until the particular election. If we should now say that with the Act of 1875 and Amendment No. 23 a Senator or a Representative is ineligible within the strict construction contended for by appellant, then neither a senator nor a representative whose term did not expire until January could be a candidate in the November election to succeed himself. Certainly these are civil officers. We might read into Section 10 of Article 5 the word ‘other’ and perhaps reach a common sense construction. However, it appears most likely that the language was meant to apply to the period of service under the election. This would be in harmony with the status in 1874 when there was no interim between election and beginning of the term to be served. When Amendment No. 23 was written, and when it was adopted by tbe people, tbe view suggested must have been in tbe public mind, and we are unwilling to say that the fundamental touched upon was intended, to be foreclosed with tbe use of tbe word ‘elected’. Tbe better view would be that tenure of office was contemplated as distinguished from tbe elective process by which tbe right to bold such office is acquired.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Jones v. Duckett