Maclean v. Speed’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

41 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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is a familiar principle that when a court of competent jurisdiction has become possessed of a case, its authority continues, subject only to the appellate authority, until the matter is finally and completely disposed of; and no court of co-ordinate authority is at liberty to interfere with its action. The principle is essential to the proper and orderly administration of the laws; and while its observance might be required on the grounds of judicial comity and courtesy, it does not rest upon such considerations exclusively, but is enforced to prevent unseemly, expensive and dangerous conflicts of jurisdiction and of process. If interference may come from one side, it may from the other also, and what is begun may be reciprocated indefinitely. The country has witnessed some such conflicts in which Federal and state courts of co-ordinate powers have unguardedly or unadvisedly undertaken to hamper or restrain each other’s action; and the mischiefs of which such cases are suggestive are quite as likely to arise when courts existing as part of the same system intrude with their process upon each other’s authority.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State Ex Rel. Greenberger v. Superior Court