Ross v. Miller’s Empirical Analysis
1935
Citation profile
4 district · 41 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 45 later decisions — most recently September 2017 · most notably STATE BY PARSONS v. Standard Oil Co. (1950), Yanow v. Seven Oaks Park, Inc. (1953)
4 district · 41 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Jamison v. Encarnacion · Lynch v. City of Long Branch · State v. Mayor of Jersey City · State v. Mayor of Belmar
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 45 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a majority of all the members of the municipal council shall constitute a quorum, and the affirmative vote of a majority of all the members shall be necessary to take any action or pass any measure, except as otherwise provided in this act.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[t]he language employed is persuasive of a design and purpose to make the approval of a majority of the full membership prescribed by law, rather than of the qualified, sitting members for the time being.... It is fairly to be presumed that, in the use of the phrase "a majority of all the members" of the councilmanic body, both in relation to the number constituting a quorum and in prescribing the requisites of valid action, the legislative concept was the full membership commanded by the act, and not a reduced body, however occurring.... But any doubt as to the legislative design in this regard is resolved by the application of another well established principle in aid of the construction of legislative enactments. Where words in a statute have received a judicial construction, the legislature will be deemed to have used then in the sense that had been ascribed to them. Lynch v. Long Branch, 111 N.J.L. 148 , 167 A. 664 .... And the same principle is applicable to a practical construction that has the sanction of long and consistent usage, especially where, as here, it is a legislative construction of a somewhat similar clause in our organic law. In such circumstances, the inference is inescapable that the legislature employed the language in that sense. The provision of our constitution (Article IV, section IV, paragraph 6), "that no bill or joint resolution shall pass unless there be a majority of all the members of each body personally present and agreeing thereto," has be”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“We are required to assume that if the Legislature had in mind the common-law rule . . . it would have chosen appropriate and unambiguous language to express that intent.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Stoltz v. McConnon
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.