Ex parte United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

459 federal appellate · 86 district · 299 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 1,084 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[T]he disregard of the Constitution which would result from sustaining the proposition is made if possible plainer by considering that, if it be that the plain legislative command fixing a specific punishment for crime is subject to be permanently set aside by an implied judicial power upon considerations extraneous to the legality of the conviction, it would seem necessarily to follow that there could be likewise implied a discretionary authority to permanently refuse to try a criminal charge because of the conclusion that a particular act made criminal by law ought not to be treated as criminal. And thus it would come to pass that the possession by the judicial department of power to permanently refuse to enforce a law would result in the destruction of the conceded powers of the other departments and hence leave no law to be enforced.”

   32 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Sorrells v. United States · In re United States

2. ““While it may not be'doubted under the common law as thus stated that courts possessed and asserted the right to exert judicial discretion in the enforcement of the law to temporarily suspend either the imposition of sentence or its execution when imposed, to the end that pardon might be procured or that a violation of law in other respects might be prevented, we are unable to perceive any ground for sustaining the proposition that at common law the courts possessed or claimed the right which is here insisted upon. No elaboration could make this plainer than does the text of the passages quoted. It is true that, owing to the want of power in common-law courts to grant new trials and to the absence of a right to review convictions in a higher court, it is we think to be conceded: (a) That both suspensions of sentence and suspensions of the enforcement of sentence, temporary in character, were often resorted to on grounds of error or miscarriage of justice, which, under our system, would be corrected either by new trials or by the exercise of the power to review; (b) that not infrequently, where the suspension either of the imposition of a sentence or of its execution was made for the purpose of enabling a pardon to be sought or bestowed, by a failure to further proceed in the criminal cause in the future, although no pardon had been sought or obtained, the punishment fixed by law was escaped. But neither of these conditions serves to convert the mere exercise of a judicial dis”

   7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Lynch · Mintie v. Biddle

3. “is inconsistent with the Constitution, since its exercise in the very nature of things amounts to a refusal by the judicial power to perform a duty resting upon it and, as a consequence thereof, to an interference with both the legislative and executive authority as fixed by the Constitution.”

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Sorrells v. United States · State v. Carmickle