severability clause
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 286 U.S. 165 - Utah Power & Light Co. v. Pfost · 1932Most cited · 485 citing opinions
it has the effect of reversing the common-law presumption, that the Legislature intends an act to be effective as an entirety, by putting in its place the opposite presumption of divisibility; and this presumption must be overcome by considerations that make evident the inseparability of the provisions or the clear probability that the Legislature would not have been satisfied with the statute unless it had included the invalid part.
How often courts cite the cases defining “severability clause”
Court decisions citing the 2 opinions that defined “severability clause” — 914 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases 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.
All 2 definitions, chronological · 1929–1932
- ORIGINAL
The effect of the statutory declaration is to create in the place of the presumption just stated the opposite one of separability; that is to say, we begin, in the light of the declaration, with the presumption that the Legislature intended the act to be divisible, and this presumption must be overcome by considerations which make evident the inseparability of its provisions or the clear probability that the invalid part being eliminated the Legislature would not have been satisfied with what remains.