Getty v. Witter’s Empirical Analysis
1941
Citation profile
11 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently February 2006
11 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on McKay v. Public Utilities Commission · State Board of Corrections v. City & County of Denver · State Civil Service Commission v. Hoag · Roberts v. People Ex Rel. Duncan · People Ex Rel. Harper v. Ingles
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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Discretion to administer the provisions of the civil service law necessarily must be lodged somewhere. Our Constitution places this responsibility in the commission. Whether its administration is good or bad, is generally not a judicial, but an executive, problem. . . . There are some matters which those clothed with executive and administrative power alone can correct. Eventually everything functions through human beings, and unless those who have the responsibility function properly and efficiently, maladjustments in governmental processes occur, most of which do not come under judicial control. . . . “. . . Here we are not concerned with a refusal to act, but with the manner in which the commission has acted. In that field it is presumed that the commission has comprehensive experience and knowledge and therefore is vested with wide discretion, and only when its exercise of power clearly is arbitrary and capricious can there be judicial interference.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.