528 F. Supp. 925 - Benjamin v. Malcolm’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 federal appellate · 2 district · 2 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “There is need to keep in mind steadily the limits of inquiry proper to the case before us. We are not framing a decree. We are asking ourselves whether anything has happened that will justify us now in changing a decree. The injunction, whether right or wrong, is not subject to impeachment in its application to the conditions that existed at its making. We are not at liberty to reverse under the guise of readjusting. Life is never static, and the passing of a decade has brought changes to the grocery business as it has to every other. The inquiry for us is whether the changes are so important that dangers, once substantial, have become attenuated to a shadow. No doubt the defendants will be better off if the injunction is relaxed, but they are not suffering hardship so extreme and unexpected as to justify us in saying that they are the victims of oppression. Nothing less than a clear showing of grievous wrong evoked by new and unforeseen conditions should lead us to change what was decreed after years of litigation with the consent of all concerned.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Duran v. Elrod

2. “1. As to public safety: ... overcrowding is a serious threat to the securi ty of both State and City institutions. However, State institutions are remote from population centers and its maximum security institutions are walled and protectable. City institutions are massed together in the center of population of New York City and without such physical features as walls. 2. As to the relative impact of the court’s decision on the respective systems: it remains an inescapable fact that the State Correctional system is nearly three times as large as the City’s and that the relative impact on the State of additions to its population of 200-300 people will therefore be proportionately less. Moreover, the impact can be diffused among many other institutions than would be true in the City system____ 3. As to the difference between conditions in detention centers in general and prisons in general: it remains true that a prison population is generally more stable and manageable than the population of a jail.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 629 F. Supp. 713 - Benjamin v. Malcolm

3. ““The question of public safety; The relative impact of the Court’s decision on the respective systems; The relative efforts of the systems themselves to discharge their duties and to solve the problems; The relative physical space available to the systems, both in terms of beds and in terms of acreage; The existence of programs or their future availability; The difference between conditions which exist in detention centers in general and prisons in general.” Benjamin v. Malcolm, 528 F.Supp. 925, 929 (S.D.N.Y.1981).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 626 F. Supp. 1264 - Benjamin v. Malcolm