Wolfson v. Concannon’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate ·

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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Maintaining public trust in the judiciary as an institution driven by legal principles rather than political concerns is a structural imperative. The rule of law depends upon it. The fundamental importance of this structural imperative has been recognized from the founding of the nation. As Alexander Hamilton emphasized in The Federalist No. 78, the courts possess “neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment....” Id. at 433 (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961). Deprived of those alternative sources of power, the authority of the judiciary instead “lies ... in its legitimacy, a product of substance and perception that shows itself in the people’s acceptance of the Judiciary as fit to determine what the ... law means and to declare what it demands.” Planned Parenthood of Se. Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 , 865, 112 S.Ct. 2791 , 120 L.Ed.2d 674 (1992); see also White, 536 U.S. at 793 , 122 S.Ct. 2528 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (“The power and the prerogative of a court ... rest, in the end, upon the respect accorded to its judgments.”). It is the courts’ perceived legitimacy as institutions grounded in established legal principles, not partisanship, “that leads decisions to be obeyed and averts vigilantism and civil strife.” Bauer, 620 F.3d at 712 . Loss of judicial legitimacy thus corrodes the rule of law, “sap[ping] the foundations of public and private confidence, and ... introducing] in its stead universal distrust and distress.” The Federalist No. 78, at 438. In this sense, “[t]he rule”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Wolfson v. Concannon

2. “The defendants here express precisely this concern — that if sitting judges may support the campaigns of others, the public will perceive them as masters of the political game, powerbrokers “trading on the prestige of their office to advance other political ends.... ” Sie-fert, 608 F.3d at 984 ; see also Model Code of Judicial Conduct R. 4.1, cmt.4 (2011) (justifying prohibitions on endorsements and speeches on behalf of other candidates as “preventing sitting judges] from abusing the prestige of judicial office to advance the interests of others”). The opposite fear is equally justified: Today’s powerbroker is tomorrow’s pawn, as the political winds shift and the next election cycle approaches. The endorsing judge entwines his fate with whomever he endorses and earns the enmity of his favored politician’s opponents. “This kind of personal affiliation between a member of the judiciary and a member of the political branches raises the specter — readily perceived by the general public — that the judge’s future rulings will be influenced by this political dependency.” Wersal v. Sexton, 674 F.3d 1010 , 1034 (8th Cir.2012) (Loken, J., concurring in the judgment) (emphasis in original).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Wolfson v. Concannon