Texas v. White’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

21 federal appellate · 7 district · 39 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 200 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[T]he preservation of the States, and the maintenance of their governments, are as much within the design and care of the Constitution as the preservation of the Union and the maintenance of the National government. The Constitution, in all of its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States.”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Poindexter v. Greenhow · National Prohibition Cases

2. “It is not necessary to attempt any exact definitions within which the acts of such a state government must be treated as valid, or invalid. It may be said, perhaps with sufficient accuracy, that acts necessary to peace and good order among citizens, such, for example, as acts sanctioning and protecting marriage and the domestic relations, governing the course of descents, regulating the conveyance and transfer of property, real and personal, and providing remedies for injuries to person and estate, and other similar acts, which would be valid if emanat ing from a lawful government,- must be regarded in general as valid when proceeding from an actual, though unlawful -government; and that acts in furtherance or support of rebellion against the United States, or intended to defeat the just rights of citizens, and other acts of like nature, must, in general, be regarded as invalid and void.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Baldy v. Hunter

3. “The ordinance of secession, adopted by the convention and ratified by a majority of the citizens of Texas, and all the acts of her legislature intended to give effect to that ordinance, were absolutely null. They were utterly without operation in law. The obligations of the State, as a member of the Union, and of every citizen of the State, as a citizen of the United States, remained perfect and unimpaired. It certainly follows that the State did not cease to be a State, nor her citizens to be citizens, of the Union. If this were otherwise, the State must have become foreign, and her citizens foreigners. The war must have ceased to be a war for the suppression of rebellion, and must have become a war for conquest and subjugation. Our conclusion, therefore, is, that. Texas continued to be a State, and a State of the Union, notwithstanding the transactions to which we have referred.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Keith v. Clark