injunction
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 293 U.S. 379 - Enelow v. New York Life Insurance · 1935Most cited · 1,016 citing opinions
interlocutory appeal
The power to stay proceedings in another court appertains distinctively to equity in the enforcement of equitable principles, and the grant or refusal of such a stay by a court of equity of proceedings at law is a grant or refusal of an injunction within the meaning of section 129 as amended.
How the Supreme Court has restated “injunction”
Each Supreme Court definition of “injunction,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “injunction”
Court decisions citing the 11 opinions that defined “injunction” — 3,517 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 11 definitions, chronological · 1827–1942
- ORIGINAL
The suit in Chancery does not draw into question the judgment and proceedings at law, or claim a right to revise them. It sets up an equity independent of the judgment, which admits the validity of that judgment, but suggests reasons why the party who has obtained it ought not to avail himself of it. It proposes to try a question entirely new, which has not been, and could not be, litigated at law.
during pendency of writ of error
There is no power, the exercise of which is more delicate, which requires greater caution, deliberation, and sound discretion, or more dangerous in a doubtful case, than the issuing an injunction. It is the strong arm of equity, that never ought to be extended, unless to cases of great injury, where courts of law cannot afford an adequate and commensurate remedy in damages. The right must be clear, the injury impending, and threatened so as to be averted only by the protecting preventive process of injunction.
an injunction is what is termed a transcendent or extraordinary power, and is therefore to be used sparingly, and only in a clear and plain case.
transcendent power
This remedy by injunction is given to prevent a wrong, for which an action at law can give no adequate redress. In its nature it is preventive justice.
preventive justice
An injunction is generally a preventive, not an affirmative remedy.
a form of relief which must rest on an actual or presently threatened interference with the rights of another
a suit for an injunction deals primarily, not with past violations, but with threatened future ones; and that an injunction may issue to prevent future wrong, although no right has yet been violated
The function of an injunction is to afford preventive relief, not to redress alleged wrongs which have been committed already. An injunction will not be used to take property out of the possession of one party and put it into that of another.
function of
issues to prevent existing or presently threatened injuries. One will not be granted against something merely feared as liable to occur at some indefinite time in the future
The relief afforded by section 129 is not restricted by the terminology used. The statute looks to the substantial effect of the order made.
appealability under § 129