Bowser & Co. v. Thompson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““But that the license fee may be imposed under the police power of the state seems quite clear. The use of the streets and public ways of the city is a use common to all, but this use must not be exercised by any to the injury of others; and when in the nature of things it will likely be so exercised, regulations may be imposed under the police power. As said by counsel for the appellees: ‘ There is, perhaps, in the catalogue of things requiring police surveillance no one thing, excepting the sale of intoxicating drinks, which requires police regulating to a greater extent than vehicles. Runabouts, collisions, running over pedestrians, stealing property given for transportation, overcharging, robbing in public conveyances, fast and reckless driving, are but a tithe of the evils calling for such surveillance in the use of vehicles on the public streets.’ “In order to accomplish this successfully, vehicles and their owners and drivers must be identified by the license system — the cost of which regulation is to be borne by the licensee. “It is said that there are ordinances already regulating the speed of vehicles within the city, but the law makers seemed not to have supposed these means sufficient to combat the evil, any more than the law against drunkenness was deemed sufficient regulation of the right to sell intoxicating drinks.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. City of Mayfield v. Carter Hardware Co.