directory statute
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 295 U.S. 490 - Escoe v. Zerbst · 1935Most cited · 1,130 citing opinions
Statutes are not directory when to put them in that category would result in serious impairment of the public or the private interests that they were intended to protect
How often courts cite the case defining “directory statute”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “directory statute” — 1,129 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.