William M'Elmoyle for the Use of Isaac Bailey v. John J Cohen’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

65 federal appellate · 12 district · 139 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 371 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Upon the first of them, we observe, though a judgment obtained in the court of. a state is not to be regarded in the courts of her sister states, as a foreign judgment, or as merely prima facie evidence of a debt to sustain an action upon the judgment in this, that by the first section of the fourth article of the Constitution, and by Act May 26, 1790, c. 11, § 1, 1 Stat. 122 , the judgment is a record, conclusive upon the merits, to which full faith and credit shall be given when authenticated as the act of Congress has prescribed. It must be obvious, when the Constitution declared that full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state, and provides that Congress may, by general laws, prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof, that the latter clause as it relates to judgments was intended to provide the means of giving to them the conclusiveness of judgments upon the merits when it is sought to carry them into judgments by suit's in the tribunals of another state. The authenticity of a judgment and its effect depend upon the law made in pursuance of the Constitution. The faith and credit due to it as the judicial proceeding of a state is given by the Constitution, independently of all legislation. By the law of the 26th of May, 1790, the judgment is made a debt of record, not examinable upon its merits; but it does not carry with it int”

   12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Wisconsin v. Pelican Insurance · Pennoyer v. Neff

2. ““Prescription is a thing of policy, growing out of the experience of its necessity; and the time after which suits or actions shall be barred, has been, from a remote antiquity, fixed by every nation, in virtue of that sovereignty by which it exercises its legislation for all persons and property within its jurisdiction. This being the foundation of the right to pass statutes of prescription or limitation, may not our states, under our system, exercise this right, in virtue of their sovereignty? or is it to be conceded to them in every other particular, than that of barring the remedy upon judgments of other states, by the lapse of time ? The states use this right upon judgments rendered in their own courts; and the common law raises the presumption of the payment of a judgment, after the lapse of twenty years. May they not, then, limit the time for remedies upon the judg’tnents of other states, and alter the common law by statute, fixing a less or larger time for such presumption, and altogether barring suits upon such judgments, if they shall not be brought within the time stated in the statute? It certainly will not be contended, that judgment-creditors of other states shall be put upon a better footing, in regard to a state’s right to legislate in this particular, than the judgment-creditors of the state in which the judgment was obtained. And if this right so exists, may it not be exercised, by a state’s restraining the remedy upon the judgment of another state, leaving ”

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Order of United Commercial Travelers of America v. Wolfe · 137 N.C. App. 362 - Wener v. Perrone & Cramer Realty, Inc.

3. “They are record evidence of a debt, or judgments of record, td be contested only in such way as judgments of record may be;- and,'consequently, are conclusive upon the defendant in every State, except for such causes as would be sufficient to set aside the judgment in the courts of the State in which it was rendered.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Embry v. Palmer · Dyer v. Johnson