Norton v. Shelby Co State of Tennessee’s Empirical Analysis
Citation profile
12 federal appellate · 11 district · 329 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 428 later decisions (7 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2024 · most notably McCray v. United States (1904), Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company v. Riverside Mills (1911)
12 federal appellate · 11 district · 329 state decisions — followed in 49 states
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 State v. Carroll · Marsh v. Fulton County · Claiborne Co v. Brooks · Town of South Ottawa v. Perkins · Post v. Supervisors
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 428 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“An unconstitutional act is not a law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; it affords no protection; it creates no office; it is, in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed.”
21 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““[F]or the existence of a de facto officer, there must be an office de jure.... Where no office legally exists, the pretended officer is merely a usurper, to whose acts no validity can be attached; and such, in our judgment, was the position of the commissioners of Shelby County who undertook to act as the county court, which could be constitutionally held only by justices of the peace. Their right to discharge the duties of justices of the peace was never recognized by the justices, but from the outset was resisted by legal proceedings, which terminated in an adjudication that they were usurpers, clothed with no authority or official function.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Baker v. State“all that is required when there is an office to make an officer de facto, is that the individual claiming the office is in possession of it, performing its duties, and claiming to be such officer under color of an election or appointment, as the case may be. It is not necessary that his election or appointment be valid, for that would make him an officer de jure. The official acts of such persons are recognized as valid on grounds of public policy, and for the protection of those having official business to transact.”
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.