Flowers v. Logan County’s Empirical Analysis
1910
Citation profile
60 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 60 later decisions — most recently November 1967 · most notably City of Lowell v. Massachusetts Bonding & Insurance (1943), Miller v. Jackson Township (1912)
60 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 Boyd County v. Arthur · Mitchell v. Henry County · Millikin v. Gillum · Pulaski County v. Sears · Daviess County v. Goodwin
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 60 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The vice in the proceeding was not in doing something not authorized by, or forbidden by, the law, but was doing that which was allowed in a manner not authorized by law. If the thing done had been illegal, or not warranted by law, however beneficial it might have been, the public ought not to be estopped to deny the validity of the expenditure; or, where the thing is authorized, but it is proposed to do it in an unauthorized manner, upon seasonable complaint those charged with doing the thing will be compelled to execute it as the law directs, and prohibited from doing it otherwise.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““The idea that a public official cannot employ himself to do work for the public is the common-law view of the implied limitations on the powers of a trustee. But where the statute expressly authorizes the act, then the common law on that point stands repealed, and, as there is nothing in the Constitution forbidding it, the question becomes one solely of legislative discretion, into the wis dom of which this court has neither the jurisdiction nor the inclination to inquire.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Where the fiscal court and the taxpayers have stood by for many years and allowed the public money to be expended by that kind of proceeding, and it has actually been applied to the purposes for which it was raised and appropriated,”
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.