Seaman v. Fedourich’s Empirical Analysis
1965
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 6 district · 22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 61 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 1993 · most notably Avery v. Midland County (1968), Bailey v. Jones (1966)
6 federal appellate · 6 district · 22 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 Reynolds v. Sims · Gomillion v. Lightfoot · Lucas v. Forty-Fourth General Assembly of Colorado · Roman v. Sincock · Davis v. Mann
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 61 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““There can be little doubt, and it is not disputed by the defendants, that that principle [one person, one vote] is applicable to elective legislative bodies exercising general governmental powers at the municipal level * * * and such has been the conclusion reached by several courts called upon to consider the question. [Citations and footnote omitted.] “It is axiomatic that local governmental units are creations of, and exercise only those powers delegated to them by, the State (N.Y.Const., art. IX, §§ 1, 2; Municipal Home Rule Law, §§ 10, 11) and, certainly, if the latter may exercise its legislative powers only in a body constituted on a population basis, any general elective municipal organ to which it delegates certain of its powers must, by a parity of reasoning, be subjected to the same constitutional requirement. Viewed in another way, if, as seems evident, the thrust of the Supreme Court’s decisions is that it is inherent within the concept of ‘equal protection’ that a person has a substantial right to be heard and to participate, through his elected representatives, in the business of government on an equal basis with all other individuals, no reason or justification exists for differentiating, so far as that right is concerned, between the general governmental business carried on in the highest legislative organs of the State and that conducted, by virtue of a delegation of authority, in municipal law-making bodies.” 262 N.Y.S.2d at 449 , 209 N.E.2d at 781 .”
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.