Snow v. Keddington’s Empirical Analysis
1948
Citation profile
13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently October 2024
13 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 Dillon v. Gloss · Matter of City of New York · Graham v. Roberts · State ex rel. Scott v. Dirckx · State ex rel. Teague v. Board of Commissioners
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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The general rule is that the term for which an officer is elected shall be fixed before the election. This is founded on the principle that the right of selecting officers for fixed terms belongs to the people, and the legislature is not permitted to defeat this right by changing the length of term of office after an officer has been elected. The facts of this case, however, do not bring it within the general rule. In this particular instance, the voters voted on the officer and the extended term at the same time. Neither party contends that the voter can be denied the right to elect constitutional officers and to set the term of office. What does separate the parties, is that plaintiff contends for, and defendant denies, the proposition that the provisions of the constitution in effect at the time the voter cast his ballot determine the length of the term of office and that an amendment to the constitution lengthening the term of office can only effect subsequent elections. It is clear from the authorities generally, that public offices may be created, abolished, or the time shortened or lengthened by constitutional amendment at any time the people choose to express their will in the manner provided by the constitution. In this case, the voters elected to lengthen the term of office of county attorney to four years. The apparent reason for this change was to make this term of office consistent with, and of the same duration as the terms of other county officers. The voters h”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“If the people are denied an opportunity to vote for county attorneys in the year 1948, it is because they, the people, have provided for the election of a county attorney only every four years and have decreed that the effective date of the change was to be prior to the time the present incumbents took office.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.