Horbach v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 19 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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is well and generally known that there are some violent and dangerous men in this country, who are in the habit of carrying pistols, belted behind them and in their pockets, who never think of fighting in any other way than with deadly weapons, who are expert in using them, and who, especially when intoxicated, bring on and press to the extreme of outrage then-deadly encounters for causes and provocations that would be regarded as utterly trivial by peaceable men; and that if one of such persons, while engaged in an angry altercation, should suddenly step back and rapidly throw his hand behind him, it might readily be understood by those who saw it to mean that he was in the act of drawing a pistol to use it. The same act by one of the great mass of our peaceable citizens who are not in the habit of carrying weapons would suggest no such thought, and in such case the pistol would have to be drawn and exhibited before any such thing would be conceived, unless there had been some very extraordinary provocation.””

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