Anastasoff v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

20 federal appellate · 27 district · 13 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 87 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Unpublished opinions are not precedent and parties generally should not cite them. When relevant to establishing the doctrines of res judicata, collateral estoppel, or the law of the case, however, the parties may cite any unpublished opinion. Parties may also cite an unpublished opinion of this court if the opinion has persuasive value on a material issue and no published opinion of this or another court would serve as well....”

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 148 F. Supp. 2d 764 - Community Visual Communications, Inc. v. City of San Antonio · 115 F. Supp. 2d 1077 - Gordon Ex Rel. Gordon v. Ottumwa Community School District

2. “It is often said among judges that the volume of appeals is so high that it is simply unrealistic to ascribe precedential value to every decision. We do not have time to do a decent enough job, the argument runs, when put in plain language, to justify treating every opinion as a precedent. If this is true, the judicial system is indeed in serious trouble, but the remedy is not to create an underground body of law good for one place and time only. The remedy, instead is to create enough judgeships to handle the volume, or, if that is not practical, for each judge to take enough time to do a competent job with each case. If this means that backlogs will grow, the price must still be paid. At bottom, rules like our Rule 28A(i) assert that courts have the following power: to choose for themselves, from among all the cases they decide, those that they will follow in the future, and those that they need not. Indeed, some forms of the non-publication rule even forbid citation. Those courts are saying to the bar: “We may have decided this question the opposite way yesterday, but this does not bind us today, and, what’s more, you cannot even tell us what we did yesterday.” As we have tried to explain in this opinion, such a statement exceeds the judicial power, which is based on reason, not fiat.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Uyesugi · Torres v. Torres

3. “A more alarming doctrine could not be promulgated by any American court, than that it was at liberty to disregard all former rules and decisions, and to decide for itself, without reference to the settled course of antecedent principles.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 321 F. Supp. 2d 150 - Alshrafi v. American Airlines, Inc. · Symbol Technologies, Inc. v. Lemelson Med