Winning v. Winning’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The statutes conferring jurisdiction on courts of equity to divorce persons from the bonds of matrimony limit the jurisdiction by prescribing the causes or grounds upon which divorces may be granted, prescribing the procedure and requiring that ‘the cause for zvhich the decree is sought must be alleged in the bill’ * * * [Code 1940, Title 34, §§ 20-27.] This jurisdiction does not exist independent of the statute, and hence courts of equity, in exercising jurisdiction to grant a divorce a vinculo, are courts of statutory and limited jurisdiction, and it is essential to the validity of the proceedings that the jurisdictional facts affirmatively appear from the record. * * * One of the jurisdictional facts essential to the validity of the proceedings is that a statutory cause or ground for divorce must be alleged in the bill, and failing in this the proceedings are coraum non judice and therefore wholly void.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Stallworth v. Stallworth