Hepburn v. Griswold’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 federal appellate · 12 district · 20 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 85 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Now the view squarely taken and generally accepted is that the remedy is inseparable from the contract itself and that statutes creating or enlarging exemptions substantially and materially are, as applied to pre-existing debts, unconstitutional as impairing the obligation of con tracts.” Continuing in a semantical vein, from 9 Am.Jur.2d Bankruptcy § 8 . . while the Congress is the exercise of the powers conferred upon it to establish uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcy is not prohibited from impairing the obligation of contracts, it is subject, as are the other great substantive powers of Congress; to the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution which provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The power of Congress to impair the obligation of a contract under its power to legislate on the subject of bankruptcies does not permit or countenance the total or partial destruction of vested property rights, and if such legislation substantially impairs vested rights, it violates the Fifth Amendment and is unconstitutional. But since any exercise of the bankruptcy power impairs the obligation of contracts, such impairment is not to be taken as in itself a denial of the process, and statutes dealing with bankruptcy matters are, as a general rule, sustained on the ground that they effect the remedy, and not vested rights.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Rutherford v. Associates Financial Services Co. (In Re Rutherford)

2. ““It is insisted on the part of the defendant that notwithstanding the fact that at the time the tender was made the supreme court of the United States, the ultimate judicial authority on all questions arising under the constitution and laws of the United States, had decided that the Legal Tender Act, so far as it applied to debts like that of the plaintiff, was void, and that he was entitled to demand payment of his debt in coin, yet he was bound to know the law tO' he as it was subsequently declared, and that a refusal to accept the tender involved the loss of his security. I think the law did not impose upon the plaintiff so unreasonable a burden. . . . The plaintiff had a right to repose upon the decision of the highest judicial tribunal in the land. It was, as applied to the relations between these parties and to- this case, the law, and not the mere evidence of the law.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Laabs v. Tax Commission

3. ““The design of the Constitution was to establish a government competent to the direction and administration of the affairs of a great nation, and, at the same time, to mark, by sufficiently definite lines, the sphere of its operations. To this end it was needful only to make express grants of general powers, coupled with a further grant of such incidental and auxiliary powers as might he required for the exercise of the powers expressly granted. These powers are necessarily extensive. It has been found, indeed, ip the practical administration of the government, that a very large part, if not the largest part, of its functions have been performed in the exercise of powers thus implied.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Ex parte Daugherty