Russell v. Farquhar’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 31 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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “and, when found, to observe and follow it though there may be a conflict between its intent and words.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Board of Insurance Com'rs v. Sproles Motor Freight Lines, Inc. · Smith v. Smith

2. “If courts were in all cases to be controlled in their construction of statutes by the mere literal meaning of the words in which they are couched, it might well be admitted that appellants' objection to the evidence was well taken; but such is not the case. To be thus controlled, as has often been held, would be for the courts in a blind effort to refrain from an interference with legislative authority by their failure to apply well-regulated rules of construction, to, in fact, abrogate their own power and usurp that of the Legislature, and cause the lawto be held indirectly the contrary of that which the Legislature had, in fact, intended to enact. While it is for the Legislature to make the law, it is the duty of the courts to try out the right of intendment of statutes upon which they are called to pass, and by their proper construction to ascertain and enforce them according to their true intent; for it is this intent which constitutes and is in fact the law, and not the mere verbiage used by inadvertence or otherwise by the Legislature to express its intent, and to follow which would pervert that intent.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. C&H Nationwide, Inc. v. Norwest Bank Texas NA