Ex parte

“ The defendants in error have filed their brief, containing an elaborate argument; but the plaintiffs in error have not furnished us any. As it is not necessary, to our judgment of affirmance of this case, to give any opinion on this point, we decline any examination of the question on an ex parte argument. ”

“ To permit an ex parte affidavit to become in effect a final adjudication of the disqualification of a judge when facts are shown, such as are here established, seems to me to be fraught with much danger to the independent discharge of duties by federal judges, and to open a door to the abuse of the privilege which is intended to be conferred by the statute in question. ”

“ While this Court’s precedents foreclose some of the petitioners’ claims for relief, others survive. The petitioners also name as defendants Stephen Carlton, Katherine Thomas, Allison Benz, and Cecile Young. On the briefing and argument before us, it appears that these particular defendants fall within the scope of Ex parte Young’s historic exception to state sovereign immunity. Each of these individuals is an executive licensing official who may or must take enforcement actions against the petitioners if they violate the terms of Texas’s Health and Safety Code, including S. B. 8. ”

“ But at least based on the limited arguments put to us at this stage of the litigation, it appears that the licensing defendants do have authority to enforce S. B. 8. [4]
In the face of this conclusion, Justice Thomas advances an alternative argument. He stresses that to maintain a suit consistent with this Court’s Ex parte Young and Article III precedents, “it is not enough that petitioners ‘feel inhibited’ ” or “ ‘chill [ed] ’ ” by the abstract possibility of an enforcement action against them. Post, at 6–7. Rather, they must show at least a credible threat of such an action against them. ”

“ But as Ex parte Young explained, this traditional exception does not normally permit federal courts to issue injunctions against state-court judges or clerks. Usually, those individuals do not enforce state laws as executive officials might; instead, they work to resolve disputes between parties. If a state court errs in its rulings, too, the traditional remedy has been some form of appeal, including to this Court, not the entry of an ex ante injunction preventing the state court from hearing cases. ”

“ Justice Sotomayor seems to admit at least part of the problem. She concedes that older “wooden” authorities like Ex parte Young appear to prohibit suits against state-court clerks. Post, at 7. Still, she insists, we should disregard those cases in favor of more “modern” case law. Ibid. In places, The Chief Justice’s opinion seems to pursue much the same line of argument. See post, at 4. But even overlooking all the other problems attending our colleagues’ “clerks-only” theory, the authorities they cite do not begin to do the work attributed to them. ”

“ Third-party standing aside, petitioners also have not shown injury or redressability for many of the same reasons they cannot satisfy Ex parte Young. For injury, petitioners have shown no likelihood of enforcement by any respondent, let alone that enforcement is “certainly impending.” ”

“ Accordingly, we hold that sovereign immunity does not bar the petitioners’ suit against these named defendants at the motion to dismiss stage. [3]
Justice Thomas alone reaches a different conclusion. He emphasizes that suits seeking equitable relief against executive officials are permissible only when supported by tradition. See post, at 2–3 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part) . He further emphasizes that the relevant tradition here, embodied in Ex parte Young, permits equitable relief against only those officials who possess authority to enforce a challenged state law. ”

“ This “conclusory statemen [t] ,” paired with a bare “ ‘legal conclusion,’ ” cannot survive a motion to dismiss. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U. S. 662, 678 (2009) . *⁠*⁠* I would instruct the District Court to dismiss this case against all respondents, including the four licensing officials, because petitioners may not avail themselves of the exception to sovereign immunity recognized in Ex parte Young. ”

“ The ex-convict is at your feet; but he woos you in the teeth of danger; he does not forget that. There is little time to be lost in idle play. We have had all the romance years ago; we come now to the stern reality. ”

“ Intermarriage between the phones and the graphs or grams is a wedding of equals. Some families of words, however, are of inferior social standing to other families, and may seek but not hope to be sought in marriage. Compare the ex's with the ports. An ex, as a preposition, belongs to a prolific family but not one of established and unimpeachable dignity. Hence the ex's, though they marry right and left, lead the other words to the altar and are never led thither themselves. Witness exclude, excommunicate, excrescence, excursion, exhale, exit, expel, expunge, expense, extirpate, extract ”

“ Our young woman so yielded at moments to what was insidious in these foredoomed ingenuities of her pity that for minutes together sometimes the weight of a new duty seemed to rest upon her—the duty of speaking before separation should constitute its chasm, of pleading for some benefit that might be carried away into exile like the last saved object of price of the émigré, the jewel wrapped in a piece of old silk and negotiable some day in the market of misery. ”

“ But I would not press the matter upon you too severely; the reparation shall be left to your own discretion; but you must decide upon what it is to be, before the Court break up.
LATITIA.
⁠Decide so soon! Will not to-morrow do, or the day after to-morrow, or the day after that?
BRIGHTLY.
⁠No, neither to-morrow nor any following morrow will do; you must pronounce your own sentence before the Court break up.
LATITIA (going about in a bewildered manner) .
⁠O, dear! what can I do? what can I say? how shall I decide? ”

“ You've got up a cry about it, and there's them that won't let it drop so easy. What's an heir at law agin a will? You take the gal back, and the cry is, 'Where's the true gal, the major's daughter?' I reckon, you'll find you're jist got yourself into a trap of your own making! ”

“ I do hereby take upon me, in the meanwhile, conditionally to remove from thee the dread sentence of excommunication, seeing thou hast made all the concession as yet in thy power, and that thou art ready to make what reparation thou canst for what hath passed, and to do such penance as may be required of thee ”

“ She recalled the happy days of her childhood, before her father, by the extraordinary and most unexpected bequest of a distant relative, became possessed of property to what extent she could form no idea. She knew that this relative had quarrelled with the heir-at-law, and left all to one he had never seen. ”

“ In this life the old miser never knew that his first judgment had been the just one, but the doubt which seems always to have haunted him—whether he had not helped to condemn the innocent—was the reason of his bequest to the convict’s wife, and explained much of the mysterious wording of the will. ”

“ I threatened you with divorce once, but you begged to be spared this disgrace; you preferred, you said, to go quietly away and fade out of my life. You have broken your promise. That absolves me from mine. To-morrow I shall institute proceedings for a divorce. I will obtain it, even if to gain the suit I have to betray my full knowledge of your wickedness—your foul murder of the man who held some guilty secret in your past life! ”

“ When you joined in the vote which impeached my honour, and possibly my life, you forgot the feelings of a brother, and dissolved the ties between us. I loathe the looking back, still less do I mean to reproach: my heart is still alive to those feelings which nature and religion dictate to me.
I have no false pride, and, therefore, have no conditions to propose to you. All that I look for is a brother; but in that word I comprehend all the sentiments of affection which I feel I discharged faithfully towards you till the moment of our separation. Consult your feelings, and God direct them. ”

“ He had braced himself to face the consequences of his own letter to the woman he loved, and he was face to face with the consequences of another man's letter to the same woman, to the woman who had two lovers. ”

“ Come, my boy, throw physic to the dogs, and be the bearer of the happy intelligence of a divorce, to render ourselves still more deserving the confidence of our beloved master, whose peace and happiness we are bound in duty to secure by every means in our power. ”

“ I want you to listen—I have told you he divorced me, the co-respondent was an old friend, a friend of my childhood, of my girlhood. He died just after the first application was made, luckily for me. He would have considered my honour before my happiness. I did not defend the case, it wasn't likely—ah, if you knew all? He proved his case; given clever counsel, willing witnesses to whom you make it worth while, and no defence, divorce is always attainable even in England. But remember: I figure as an adulteress in every English-speaking paper. ”

“ But the young man has doubtless found some wily lawyer to inform him, that should you die intestate he would be your heir; as by your late husband's will, my love, though he has left every thing to you, should you not make a will every shilling of the property will go to him, whatever other children you have now, or may have hereafter. ”

“ I.—The Superstition of Divorce IT is futile to talk of reform without reference to form. To take a case from my own taste and fancy, there is nothing I feel to be so beautiful and wonderful as a window. All casements are magic casements, whether they open on the foam or the front-garden; they lie close to the ultimate mystery and paradox of limitation and liberty. ”

“ For, as a penalty for belonging to a set which, to a greater degree, perhaps, than any other, recognises the possibility of an up-to-date couple having a mutually implied understanding that neither shall object to the discreet—and more or less temporary—faithlessness of the other—she knew that it would be well-nigh miraculous if some kindly disposed persons did not go still further for an explanation of his conduct, and point to her and her husband as a conspicuous example of such a precious pair. ”

“ If you, our Commons, force upon us a husband whom we dislike, it may occasion the inconvenience of our death; [175] if we marry where we do not love, we shall be in our grave in three months, and the heir of whom you speak will not have been brought into being. ”

“ Before your divorce you were completely free. A firmer and less compromising stand in society? Hardly, you must allow, considering the many doubtful and unpleasant incidents of your life, that to shield my own reputation my counsel had to bring to light. Undisturbed union with your lover? Your own subsequent and most inexplicable behaviour forfeited for ever all chance of such a future. ”

“ It is on that One, that he who judges should reflect, through fear of excommunicating unjustly; for whoever shall excommunicate a man from temporal interest or pride, or in order to revenge himself of some injury, and against his conscience, excommunicates himself. ”

“ Collateral is the evidence of persons who, though their relationship to the accused partially invalidates their testimony,—as wife and husband, child and parent, master and servant,—may nevertheless be usefully heard for purposes of comparison. ”

“ But marriage, with all its accompanying conventions and indissoluble bonds—indissoluble, except through the loathsome medium of the divorce court—was a condition of life that his whole nature shrank from. ”

“ Shall it be so after you have been together a great while, each of you in undoing yourselves, enhancing your guilt, and heaping up wrath, that their so wisely changing their minds and their course, and choosing such happiness for themselves, should now at length be the beginning of such an exceeding and everlasting separation between you and them? ”

“ But if, even then, he do not better himself—if he understands how great the penalty is —he shall be subject to excommunication. But, if he is a wicked man, he shall be given over to corporal punishment.
24. What ought to he the measure of the excommunication. According to the amount of the fault the measure of the excommunication or of the discipline ought to be extended: which amount of the faults shall be determined by the judgment of the abbot. If any brother, however, be taken in lighter faults, he shall be prevented from participating at table. ”

“ Why, that fellow has all your lives and eternities in his hand; and with one small and almost imperceptible motion of a spoke, in a gale of wind, might give a vast deal of work to surrogates and lawyers, in proving last wills and testaments.
Ay, you may well stare at him now. He does not look much like a man who might play into the hands of an heir-at-law, does he? ”

“ Whose unsullied name he bears?
The parents of the lady will dispute,
Some clamorous creditors will their quittance press,
And then the young and trusting wife,
All tears and jealous rage, and pale,
Will fear he loves another ”

“ This is a debt owing to those who have conducted themselves well in any relation, they ought to have the praise of it: You have dealt kindly with the dead and with me, that is, "You were good wives to your husbands that are gone, and have been good daughters to me, and not wanting to your duty in either relation." Note, When we and our relations are parting, by death or otherwise, it is very comfortable if we have both their testimony and the testimony of our own consciences for us that while we were together we carefully endeavoured to do our duty in the relation. ”

“ The article in my mother's marriage settlement, which I told the reader I was at the pains to search for, and which, now that I have found it, I think proper to lay before him,—is so much more fully express'd in the deed itself, than ever I can pretend to do it, that it would be barbarity to take it out of the lawyer's hand:—It is as follows. ”

“ Thus vanished the last hopes of a sincere reconciliation between two persons who were at the same time attracted towards and repelled from each other by insurmountable instincts; who knew each other too well not to fear each other, or to confide in the promises of which neither was sparing without exacting binding pledges which neither could nor would be given. ”