In re Sealed Case (Government Records)’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

13 federal appellate · 3 district · 3 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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[jjust as corporate records belong to the corporation and are held for the entity by the custodian only in an agency capacity, ... so government records do not belong to the custodian ... but to the government agency.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Dean · Gloves, Inc. v. Berger

2. “The district court’s ruling relied upon appellee’s ex parte submission, which described fourteen categories of documents but did not include the documents themselves. The court accepted these categorical descriptions as adequately informative and did not direct production of any of the documents in categories A, B, L-l, and M, or any in categories C-K that appellee may have decided were not official records .... A reviewing court, in these circumstances, is unable to determine whether the trial court’s ruling is reasonable, i.e., supported by the record and not arbitrary. The district court, as just observed, en gaged in no factfinding from the documents themselves; the court neither saw the documents nor heard testimony, in open court or in camera, regarding the nature and use of the undisclosed documents. Because the district court accepted a blindfold, it was unable to set down reasons, capable of review, for designating certain documents as government records and others as personal papers. See, e.g., Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum Dated April 23, 1981 Witness v. United States, 657 F.2d 5, 7-8 (2d Cir.1981). ... At the very least, in a case such as the one before us, the district court should not rest on counsel’s categorical groupings; the court should see the documents as to which the characterization “government record” or “private record” is genuinely in contention, and say why particular documents qualify as government records not subject to the Fifth Amendment, or i”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Resolution Trust Corp. v. Greif

3. “[j]ust as corporate records belong to the corporation and are held for the entity by the custodian only in an agency capacity, so government records do not belong to the custodian, in this case the appellee, but to the government agency. Their production thus falls outside the Fifth Amendment privilege, which is a personal one.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Jung Chul Park v. Cangen Corp.