State v. Smiley’s Empirical Analysis
1902
Citation profile
1 district · 45 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 47 later decisions — most recently May 2016 · most notably Edmund Smiley v. State of Kansas (1905), In re Seizure of 7 Barrels of Wine (1920)
1 district · 45 state decisions — followed in 10 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Ass'n · Addyston Pipe Steel Company v. United States · United States v. Reese · Leisy v. Hardin · United States v. E. C. Knight Co.
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 47 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““We construe the general words of our statute to be comprehensive only of those cases which are the rightful subjects of legislation of the kind in question. However, we disavow doing so merely in order to shelter the statute under the rule mentioned, but because the ancient established and wise canon of interpretation requires it to be done. Sporadic and anomalous cases indicating to the contrary may be found, as they may be found to the contrary of every settled accepted doctrine of the law; but the rule that the general words of statutes will be restricted in application to cases presumptively within the legislative intent has been so long accepted as a cardinal principle that its occasional denial, even by the most learned of courts, fails utterly of adverse impression.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. In re Gale“Throughout the entire history of English and American law the courts have been ruling that the general words of statutes were to be restrained in import and application whenever the taking of them in literal sense would lead to absurd or hurtful consequences, and the same is true under the American system of written constitutions, whenever the taking of general words in their full signification would expose them to conflict with the organic law.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““. . . The general doctrine is that only the invalid parts of a statute are without legal efficacy. This is qualified by the further rule that if the void and valid parts of the statute are so connected with each other in the general scheme of the act that they cannot be separated without violence to the evident intent of the legislature, the whole must fall. These rules are of every-day enforcement in the courts. . . .” (p. 247.)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Boyer v. Ferguson
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.