Funk v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

308 federal appellate · 33 district · 241 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 816 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “It has been said so often as to have become axiomatic that the common law is not immutable but flexible, and by its own principles adapts itself to varying conditions.”

   26 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Dimick v. Schiedt · United States v. Wood

2. “One of its (the common law's) oldest maxims was that where the reason of a rule ceased, the rule also ceased, and it logically followed that when it occurred to the courts that a particular rule had never been founded upon reason, and that no reason existed in support thereof, that rule likewise ceased, and perhaps another sprang up in its place which was based upon reason and justice as then conceived. No rule of the common law could survive the reason on which it was founded. It needed no statute to change it but abrogated itself.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Tucker · Manoukian v. Tomasian

3. ““ ‘Legislation of similar import prevails in most of the States. The spirit of this legislation has controlled the decisions of the courts, and steadily, one by one, the merely technical barriers which excluded witnesses from the stand have been removed, till now it is generally, though perhaps not universally, true that no one is excluded therefrom unless the lips of the originally adverse party are closed by death, or unless some one of those peculiarly confidential relations, like that of husband and wife, forbids the breaking of silence. “ ‘* * * If interest and being party to the record do not exclude a defendant on trial from the witness stand, upon what reasoning can a codefendant, not on trial, be adjudged incompetent?’ “That case was decided December 5, 1892. Twenty-five years later this court had before it for consideration the case of Rosen v. United States, supra [ 245 U.S. 467 , 38 S.Ct. 148 , 62 L.Ed. 406 ]. Rosen had been tried and convicted in a federal district court for conspiracy. A person jointly indicted with Rosen, who had been convicted upon his plea of guilty, was called as a witness by the government and allowed to testify over Rosen’s objection. This court sustained the incompetency of the witness. After saying that while 'the decision in the Reid case had not been specifically overruled, its authority was seriously shaken by the decisions in both the Logan [Logan v. United States, 144 U.S. 263 , 12 S.Ct. 617 , 36 L.Bd. 429] and Benson cases, the cou”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Ryno