Ex parte Screws’s Empirical Analysis
1873
Citation profile
4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently December 1995
4 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on People ex rel. Drake v. Mahaney · People ex rel. Harless v. Hatch · Perkins v. Corbin · Challefoux v. Ducharme · State v. Johnson
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.
“"The Senate and House of Representatives, each since their organization under the proposal of the Attorney General of the United States, made for that purpose, has declared, that certain persons who had no certificates of election were elected by the people; and certain other persons who had certificates of election were not elected by the people; and the first named persons have been declared and recognized as members of the respective houses. This is conclusive upon us, and we have no power to review or revise what has thus been done. These persons, if elected by the qualified electors, were members of the General Assembly, from the day of their election; and, being members, then, the two bodies, who convened and organized at the court-house in Montgomery, had a majority in both houses; and having such majority, when recognized by the governor, were a constitutional General Assembly, and were competent to do any act, as a General Assembly.... They could elect a public printer, or a senator to the Congress of the United States."”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“"How easy will it be, when the parties into which the members may be divided are nearly equal, for a sufficient number of seats to be contested, to raise genuine doubts about who are entitled to them? The State is liable to be convulsed on the most frivolous occasions and long afterwards private citizens may be greatly injured, without fault of theirs, by judicial determination of the validity of laws, which they were unable in any way correctly to determine for themselves. Such doubt and difficulty now exist in this State; and to the beneficent interposition of the federal authority alone are we indebted for the privilege of deciding this case before a civil tribunal, rather than having it submitted to the crude arbitrament of intestine strife."”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.