Patterson v. Kentucky’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

25 federal appellate · 8 district · 82 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 253 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““By the settled doctrines of this court the police power extends at least to the protection of the lives, the health, and the property of the community against the injurious exercise by any citizen of his own rights. State legislation, strictly and legitimately for police purposes, does not, in the sense of the constitution, necessarily intrench upon any authority which has been confided, expressly or by implication, to the national government.””

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Reeves v. Corning · Western Union Tel. Co. v. Mayor of New York

2. ““The right which the patentee or his assignee possesses in the property created by the application of a patented discovery must be enjoyed subject to the complete and salutary power, with which the states have never parted, of so defining and regulating the sale and use of property within their respective limits as to afford protection to the many against the injurious conduct of the few. ””

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Webber v. Virginia · Belknap v. Schild

3. ““ ‘It [this court] has nevertheless, with marked distinctness and uniformity, recognized the necessity, growing out of the fundamental conditions of civil society, of upholding state police regulations which were enacted in good faith, and had appropriate and direct connection with that protection to life, health, and property which each state owes to her citizens. * * But neither the [fourteenth] amendment — broad and comprehensive as it is — nor any other amendment was designed to interfere with the power of the state, sometimes termed its police power, to prescribe regulations to promote the health, peace, morals, education, and good order of the people.’ * * Granting, then, that there is a liberty of contract which cannot be violated even under the sanction of direct legislative enactment, but assuming, as according to settled law we may assume, that such liberty of contract is subject to such regulations as the state may reasonably prescribe for the common good and the well-being of society, what are the conditions under which the judiciary may declare such regulations to be in excess of legislative authority and void? Upon this point ihere is no room for dispute, for the rule is universal that a legislative enactment, federal or state, is never to be disregarded or held invalid, unless it be, beyond question, plainly and palpably in excess of legislative power. ’ ’”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. In re Williams · Stettler v. O'Hara