Holmes v. . Carley’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 district · 31 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 35 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is not the words of the law, but the internal sense of it, that makes the law: and our law, like all others, consists of two parts, viz., of body and soul. The letter of the law is the body of the law, and the sense and reason of the law are the soul of the law,—quia ratio legts est anima ley is,—and the law may be resembled to a nut, which has a shell and a kernel within; the letter of the law represents the shell, and the sense of it the kernel; - and as you will be no better for the nut if you make use only of the shell, so you will receive no benefit from the law if you rely upon the letter, and as the fruit and profit of the nut lie in the kernel and not in the shell, so the fruit and profit of the law consist in the sense more than in the letter. And it often happens that when you know the letter yon know not the sense, for sometimes the sense is more confined and contracted than the letter, and sometimes it is. more large and extensive.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. United States v. Falkenhainer