Sears v. Cottrell’s Empirical Analysis
1858
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 1 district · 50 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 62 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2008 · most notably Mugler v. State of Kansas State of Kansas Tufts (1887), United States v. Rodgers (1983)
3 federal appellate · 1 district · 50 state decisions — followed in 12 states
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 John Den James Murray and John Kayser v. The Hoboken Land and Improvement Company John Den James B Murray et al. · Bloodgood v. Mohawk & Hudson Railroad · Wheeler v. Wheeler · Flint River Steamboat Co. v. Foster · Foster v. President of the Essex Bank
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 62 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““No rule of construction is better settled in this country, both upon principle and authority, than that the acts of a State legislature are to be presumed constitutional until the contrary is shown; and it is only when they manifestly infringe some provision of the Constitution that they can be declared void for that reason. In cases of doubt, every possible presumption, not clearly inconsistent with the language and the subject matter, is to be made in favor of the constitutionality of the act. “The power of declaring laws unconstitutional should be exercised with extreme caution, and never where serious doubt exists as to the conflict.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage““If it be said, the law is unnecessarily severe, and may sometimes do injustice, without fault in the sufferer under it, our reply is: these are considerations that may very properly be addressed to the legislature, but not to the judiciary — they go to the expediency of the law, and not to its constitutionality.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.