United States v. Huggett’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 district ·

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

1. “I have taken the trouble to examine with care the legislation concerning our postal affairs, and do not find a single instance where Congress has ever used any other word to include ‘ letters ’ than that word itself, except such expressions as ‘ the mail,’ ‘ mail-matter,’ ‘ bag or mail of letters,’ etc. . . . Whenever the legislation in hand requires specific classification or enumeration, I find no word ever substituted for ‘ letters ’ to express that-which is commonly known as letters in relation to' the postal service. We have ‘letter and newspaper envelopes,’ ‘ letter correspondence,’ ‘ registered letters,’ ‘ unclaimed letters,’ ‘dead letters,’ ‘request letters,’ ‘non-delivered letters,’ ‘all letters and- other mail matter,’ ‘foreign letters,’ ‘letters or packets,’ ‘ letters -and packets,’ ‘ letter postage,’ ‘ letter mail,’ ‘ letter and other mail matter,’ and such like, almost innumerably ; and these I have taken quite at random from the Revised Statutes. Can if be possible that Congress, then, wishing to include ‘ letters ’ in any particular and' accurate enumeration, shall drop that word so imbedded in our postal laws and that of pur ancestors beyond the sea, and adopt some unfamiliar, inferior, and in every sense ambiguous term to express the idea ?”

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