State v. Higgins’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

18 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In the case at bar the public interest competing against defendant’s interest to vindicate a claimed constitutional right is the avoidance of the proliferation of criminality and the potential for anarchy which inheres in allowing citizens to engage in “self-help” conduct constituting an independent crime as the initial step of a collateral attack upon the constitutionality of a statute and of governmental action taken pursuant to such statute. With the contest in this posture our view is that the “practical realities” of the public interest are sufficiently weighty to overbalance the defendant’s interest to achieve, by a collateral attack, the vindication of his constitutional rights-at least when, as here, the constitutional rights asserted are not of the type protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (or counterpart provisions of the Constitution of Maine). Cf. Poulos v. New Hampshire, 345 U.S. 395 , 73 S.Ct. 760 , 97 L.Ed. 1105 (1953).”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. State v. Albert · State v. O'Neill.

2. ““The past cannot always be erased by a new judicial declaration. The effect of the subsequent ruling as to invalidity may have to be considered in various aspects,-with respect to particular relations, individual and corporate, and particular conduct, private and official. Questions of rights claimed to have become vested, of status, of prior determinations deemed to have finality and acted upon accordingly, of public policy in the light of the nature both of the statute and of its previous application, demand examination. ... [I]t is manifest ... that an all-inclusive statement of a principle of absolute retroactive invalidity cannot be justified.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Sewall v. Spinney Creek Oyster Co., Inc.

3. “[The] particular limitations upon collateral attack as a method of raising constitutional issues are well recognized. These limitations reflect a public policy judgment that "respect for law" is a value of our society of the highest priority and must be held to overbalance a citizen's interest [in] vindicating] rights, even if constitutionally rooted, by a collateral at tack initiated [after] the citizen's resort to "self-help". ...”

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