Bull v. Conroe’s Empirical Analysis
1860
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 1986
16 state decisions — followed in 10 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.
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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“But I cannot assent to the doctrine that the discretionary power given to the legislature is absolute and unlimited; and that it may do no violence to the clause, as well by exempting too much as too little.... I have endeavored to give my views and the reasons which have led to my conclusions upon this latter branch of the subject; but as my brethren think differently, those views cannot be regarded as the true exposition of the constitution in this particular.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. In re Martinson
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.