Shapiro v. Lyle’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 3 district · 2 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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The contention that the National Prohibition Act [ 27 U.S.C.A. § 1 et seq.] is a deprivation of the free exercise of religion by restricting the delivery of unlimited use of wine, and is contrary to the constitutional guaranty of religious freedom, is, as said by the Supreme Court in Mormon Church v. United States, supra, 136 U.S. 1 , at page 49, 10 S.Ct. 792, 805 , 34 L.Ed. 481 , altogether a sophistical plea: “ 'No doubt the Thugs of India imagined that their belief in the right of assassination was a religious belief; but their thinking so did not make it so. The practice of suttee by the Hindu widows may have sprung from a supposed religious conviction. The offering of human sacrifices by our own ancestors in Britain was no doubt sanctioned by an equally conscientious impulse. But no one, on that account, would hesitate to brand these practices now as crimes against society, and obnoxious to condemnation and punishment by the civil authority.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Butler v. Kavanagh