Watts v. Gordon’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

13 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. ““The great controlling purpose and policy of the constitution, is the protection, the preservation of the homestead, — the dwelling-place. A houseless, homeless population, is a burden upon the energy and industry, and corrupting to the morals of the community, of which they may be members. No greater calamity, not tainted with crime, can befall a family, than to be expelled from the roof under which it has been gathered and sheltered. Protection of an estate or interest in lands, whatever may be its dignity or inferiority, merely because it is an estate or interest in lands, is not the purpose of the constitution, or of the statutes. ... It is the house, the dwelling-place,— not of necessity, an estate or interest in lands, — which must be protected and preserved. Usually, it is accompanied by such estate or interest; but, if it is not, it is the misfortune of the occupant, and of those who are dependent upon him and can not subject it to a liability, to which it would not be exposed if such estate or interest attended it. . . . Whether these houses, attended by a legal right to the use and occupation of the land on which they stand, are a homestead within the purview of the constitution, and protected by it, depends, not on the quantity or quality of the estate of the lessee, but on the nature and character of the act with which they were put in place, and the intention of the lessee, as shown by the uses to which they are appropriated.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Federal Land Bank of Baltimore v. Municipal Court of Ciales