Dotson v. Burchett’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

25 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 25 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is always delicate and embarrassing where an attorney or client feels that a judge ought not to try his case and is impelled to offer even an informal and off-the-record suggestion of it. The attitude is, of course, greatly magnified when it becomes necessary to offer formal objection and proceed to 'swear him off the bench.’ This court appreciates such an embarrassing situation, and we, too, feel a delicacy in the matter. We realize that most judges are of sufficient integrity and sensitiveness to judicial duty and responsibility to rise above and put away conditions which suspicious parties may think will influence or color their decisions. However, there is always the higher consideration that every litigant is entitled to 'nothing less that the cold neutrality of an impartial judge’ and should be able to feel that his cause has been tried by a judge who is ‘wholly free, disinterested, impartial and independent.’ . . . Any doubt of qualification, therefore, should be resolved in favor of a party questioning it, bona fide, and upon grounds having substance and significance.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Wells v. Walter

2. “It is readily conceived that a judge may have stepped aside upon misinformation or an an erroneous assumption of fact (such for example, as kinship to one of the parties) and later the error is discovered; or that he may have been impelled to vacate upon some condition which passes away. In such a state of case, the judge may consider it his duty to resume the bench. Being competent in the first instance to pass on his qualification, why is he not competent in the later instance under changed conditions? [ 301 Ky. 31 , 190 S.W.2d at 699 (emphasis added).]”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Morrison v. District of Columbia Board of Zoning Adjustment

3. “[W]e have often said that an objection to the trial judge raises a question of jurisdiction. The statement, of course, has reference to proper power to act judicially in the matter by reason of disqualification. It is a kind of jurisdiction that may be accepted by a party by the failure to raise objection seasonably. That, it may be said, is based upon the principle of waiver or estoppel.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Appalachian Regional Healthcare, Inc. v. Coleman