Watson v. Tarpley’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

18 federal appellate · 5 district · 3 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 72 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Whilst it will not be denied, that the laws of the several States are of binding authority upon ... persons and property within their appropriate jurisdiction, it is perfectly clear that those laws cannot ... destroy or control the rights of parties litigant to whom the right of resort to [federal] courts has been secured by the laws and constitution [of the United States].”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Hefley v. Textron, Inc. · Diaz v. San Jose Unified School District

2. ““In all the various cases which have hitherto come before us for decision, this court have uniformly supposed that the true interpretation of the 31th section limited its application to state laws strictly local; that is to say, to the positive statutes of the state, and the construction thereof adopted by the local tribunals, and to rights and titles to things having a permanent locality, such as the rights and titles to real estate, and other matters immovable and intraterritorial in their nature and character. It never has been supposed by us that the section did apply, or was designed to apply, to questions of a more general nature, not at all dependent upon local statutes or local usages of a fixed and permanent operation; as, for example, to the construction of ordinary contracts or other written instruments, and especially to questions of general commercial law, where the state tribunals are called upon to perform the like functions as ourselves; that is, to ascertain, upon general reasoning and legal analogies, what is the true exposition of the contract or instrument, or what is the just rule furnished by the principles of commercial law to govern the case. And we h.ave not now the slightest difficulty in holding that this section, upon its true intendment and construction, is strictly limited to local statutes and local usages of the character before stated, and does not extend to contracts and other instruments of a commercial nature, the true interpretation and ef”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Phipps v. Harding

3. ““The general commercial law being circumscribed within no local limits, nor committed for its administration to" any peculiar jurisdiction, and the Constitution and laws of the United States having conferred upon the citizens of the several states, and upon aliens, the power or privilege of litigating and enforcing their rights acquired under and defined by that general commercial law, before the judicial tribunals of the United States, it must follow by regular consequence that any state law or regulation, the effect of which would be to impair the rights thus secured, or to devest the federal courts of cognizance thereof, in their fullest acceptation under the commercial law, must be nugatory and unavailing.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Peterson v. Metropolitan Life Ins.