Leeman v. Vocelka’s Empirical Analysis
1948
Citation profile
2 district · 40 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 42 later decisions — most recently April 2010 · most notably Nickel v. School Board of Axtell (1953), Concerned Citizens of Kimball County, Inc. v. Department of Environmental Control (1993)
2 district · 40 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 United States v. United Mine Workers of America · Sawyer · Sheridan v. Colvin · Niklaus v. Holloway · Lee v. City of McCook
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 42 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Without question the first part of the charge came clearly within the classification of a constructive criminal contempt, which could only be prosecuted in the name of the State and by information. Private litigants in such a situation have no right or authority to prosecute such actions, and thus intimidate and harass litigants and public officials under the pretext of preserving the power and vindicating the dignity of the court. We are not unmindful that the power of courts should be preserved and that the dignity of courts should be vindicated for the benefit of the public, but competent public officials and adequate proceedings are otherwise available for that purpose, which will also protect and preserve the fundamental rights and liberties of litigants which courts were created to protect. Viewed in that light, the first part of the charge of contempt falls of its own weight for want of any power or authority to prosecute the same.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““Where a statute gives a discretionary power to an officer to be exercised by him upon his own opinion of certain facts, he is the sole and exclusive judge of the existence of those facts; the courts will not attempt to interfere with or control the exercise of his discretionary powers, in the absence of any controlling provisions in the law conferring the power. . . . [T]he judiciary will not interfere with executive officers in the performance of duties which are discretionary in their nature or involve the exercise of judgment. . . . [T]here exists no power in the courts ... to act upon the officer so as to interfere with the exercise of that judgment while the matter is properly before him for action. The reason for this is that the law reposes this discretion in him for that occasion, and not in the courts.””
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.