suit
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 290 U.S. 18 - Missouri v. Fiske · 1933Most cited · 473 citing opinions
What is a suit? We understand it to be prosecution or pursuit of some claim, demand or request; in law language, it is the prosecution of some demand in a court of justice. * * * To commence a suit is to demand something by the institution of process in a court of justice; and to prosecute the suit, is, according to the common acceptation of language, to continue that demand. By a suit commenced by an individual against a state, we should understand process sued out by that individual against the state, for the purpose of establishing some claim against it by the judgment of a court; and the prosecution of that suit is its continuance.
How often courts cite the case defining “suit”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “suit” — 470 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.