Coxe v. Whitney’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

14 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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The law out of respect to the frailty of human passions, may look with an eye of some indulgence upon the violation of good order, produced in the moment of irritation and excitement from abusive language. But where there has been time for deliberation, the peace of society requires that men should suppress their passions, and neither reason or law will suffer them to claim a diminution of their responsibility for their misconduct. . . . But ira furor brevis est : what is done twenty-four or forty-eight hours after the provocation received, is not the result of that passion, but is the deliberate infliction of vengeance for an injury real or supposed, and this spirit of retaliation, however consonant it may be to the customs of society, the law does not countenance or tolerate.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. O'Shea v. Opp

2. “In an action for assault the evidence of provocation which is allowed to mitigate the damages, must be so recent `as to induce a fair presumption that the violence was done during the continuance of the feelings and passions excited by it. On any other principles the law would countenance the most revengeful feelings, and indirectly also an appeal by persons conceiving themselves injured to force and violence.'”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. O'Shea v. Opp