Tynan v. Walker’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 federal appellate · 48 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 60 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “—“A most dangerous and pernicious mode of reasoning, which amounts to judicial legislation, and overturns the maxim that courts are authorized to declare the law only, arid not to make it. If they may add at all to the exceptions provided for in the statutes, under the pretense that the,case before them is of equal equity with those given in the statutes, who is to fix the limit to their interpolation or establish the line between legislative and judicial function? If they may add one to the list of excepted cases, by a parity of reasoning they may add another, and so on until the entire body of the statute has become emasculated and the will of the judiciary substituted for that of the legislature. * * * It is an universal principle of construction that courts must find the intent of the -legislature in the statute itself. Unless some ground can be found in the statute for restraining or enlarging the meaning of its general words, they must receive a general construction, and the courts cannot arbitrarily subtract from or add thereto.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Chauncey v. Dyke Bros.