West v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

7 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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “presume that the General Assembly meant what it said and said what it meant. To that end, we must afford the statutory text its plain and ordinary meaning, we must view the statutory text in the context in which it appears, and we must read the statutory text in its most natural and reasonable way, as an ordinary speaker of the English language would.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Major v. State

2. “While this Court has the authority to narrow a statute to avoid unconstitutional infirmities under our system of separation of powers, this Court does not have the authority to rewrite statutes.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. MAYS v. the STATE.