Mount Pleasant v. Beckwith’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

42 federal appellate · 3 district · 155 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 282 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““. . . It is sufficient that here, in our judgment, there was a continuation of the Corporation of Pensacola, with its original rights of property and obligations, not • a new and distinct creation of corporate capacity and liability. “. . . The inhibition of the Constitution, which preserves against the interference of a State the sacredness of contracts, applies to the liabilities of municipal corporations created by its permission; and although the repeal or modification of the charter of a corporation of that kind is not within the inhibition, yet it will not be admitted, where its legislation is susceptible of another construction, that the State has in this way sanctioned an evasion of, or escape from, liabilities, the creation of which it authorized. When, therefore, a new form is given to an old municipal corporation, or such a corporation is reorganized under a new charter, taking in its new organization the place of the old one, embracing substantially the same corporators and the same territory, it will be presumed that the Legislature intended a continued existence of the same corporation, although different powers are possessed under the new charter, and different officers administer its affairs; and, in the absence of express provision for their payment otherwise, it will also be presumed, in such case, that tire Legislature intended that the liabilities as well as the rights of property of the corporation in its old form should accompany the corporation in its ”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Pepin TP. v. Sage · Fuller v. Consolidated Rural High-School District No. 1

2. ““The creation of municipal corporations, and the conferring upon them of certain powers and subjecting them to corresponding duties, does not deprive the legislature of the State of that general control over their citizens which was before possessed. It still has authority to amend their charters, enlarge or diminish their powers, extend or limit their boundaries, consolidate two or more into one, overrule their legislative action whenever it is deemed unwise, impolitic or unjust, or even abolish them altogether in the legislative discretion, and substitute those which are different. The rights and franchises of such a corporation, being granted for the purposes of government, can never become such vested rights as against the State that they cannot be taken away; nor does the charter constitute a contract in the sense of the constitutional provision which prohibits the obligation of contracts being violated. * * * Restraints on the legislative power of control must be found in the constitution of the State, or they must rest alone in the legislative discretion. If the legislative action in these cases operate injuriously to the municipalities or to individuals, the remedy is not with the courts. The courts have no power to interfere, and the people must be looked to, to right through the ballot-box all these wrongs.” 1 Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations, 8th Ed., 393 et seq.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Gomillion v. Lightfoot · State ex rel. Pritchard v. Grefe

3. ““Counties, cities, and towns are municipal corporations, created by the authority of the Legislature; and they derive all their powers from the source of their creation, except where the Constitution of the state otherwise provides. Beyond doubt, they are. in general, made bodies politic and corporate; and are usually invested with certain subordinate legislative powers, to facilitate the due administration of their own internal affairs, and to promise the general welfare of the municipality. They have no inherent jurisdiction to make laws, or to adopt governmental regulations, nor can they exercise any other powers in that regard than such' as are expressly or impliedly derived f 'om their charters, or other statutes of the state.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Joint School Dist. No. 132 v. Dabney · United States v. Wheeler