Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

Rights

Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court

Definitions from Case Law

From 209 U.S. 349 - Hudson County Water Co. v. McCarter · 1908Most cited · 885 citing opinions

limits by police power

All rights tend to declare themselves absolute to their logical extreme. Yet all in fact are limited by the neighborhood of principles of policy which are other than those on which the particular right is founded, and which become strong enough to hold their own when a certain point is reached. The limits set to property by other public interests present themselves as a branch of what is called the police power of the state. The boundary at which the conflicting interests balance cannot be determined by any general formula in advance, but points in the line, or helping to establish it, are fixed by decisions that this or that concrete case falls on the nearer or farther side.

How often courts cite the case defining “Rights”

1900192519501975200020252030138

Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “Rights” — 882 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.