Ed Brown v. James Gilmore’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

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

1. “In order that the right of every pupil to the free exercise of religion be guaranteed within the schools and that the freedom of each individual pupil be subject to the least possible pressure from the Commonwealth either to engage in, or to refrain from, religious observation on school grounds, the school board of each school division shall establish the daily observance of one minute of silence in each classroom of the division. During such one-minute period of silence, the teacher responsible for each classroom shall take care that all pupils remain seated and silent and make no distracting display to the end that each pupil may, in the exercise of his or her individual choice, meditate, pray, or engage in any other silent activity which does not interfere with, or impede other pupils in the like exercise of individual choice. The Office of the Attorney General shall intervene and shall provide legal defense of this law.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Croft v. Governor of Texas

2. “The purpose of the Bill has been stated and restated is not a religious crusade. It’s not to try and re-inject prayer in the public school system. The primary thing was out of the frustrations that many of us have felt based on the violence in some of our schools, such as Columbine and the Khenchla situation in Oregon. This was simply an opportunity, hopefully, that kids in school would reflect if more than anything else. I’m saying, we’re not putting prayer on a higher pedestal or a lower pedestal than meditate and reflect. But if students would just spend one minute to reflect on who they are, what they’re doing and where they’re going. The word prayer in there was put in there so prayer would not be discriminated against.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Croft v. Governor of Texas

3. “[E]ven though we must not speculate about a statute's application in considering the second and third prongs of the Lemon test, we can examine the available data to determine the statute’s 'inevitable' effects”), cf. Adler, 206 F.3d at 1083 (considering how statute had been applied, while noting that argument regarding application of statute”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 390 F. Supp. 2d 1286 - Selman v. Cobb County School District