Horton v. Meskill’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
10 district · 312 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 324 later decisions — most recently July 2025 · most notably Barde v. Board of Trustees (1988), White v. Burns (1990)
10 district · 312 state decisions — followed in 23 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 Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. · United States v. Nixon · San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez · William Marbury v. James Madison · Dunn v. Blumstein
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 324 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The declaratory judgment procedure in Connecticut. . .is peculiarly well adapted to the judicial determination of controversies concerning constitutional rights and. . .the constitutionality of state legislative or executive action.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage“[T]he government cannot justifiably claim interference with its functions when the acts complained of are unconstitutional or unauthorized by statute. On the other hand, where no substantial claim is made that the defendant officer is acting pursuant to an unconstitutional enactment or in excess of his statutory authority, the purpose of the sovereign immunity doctrine requires dismissal of the suit for want of jurisdiction.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[a]ll men when they form a social compact, are equal in rights; and no man or set of men are entitled to exclusive public emoluments or privileges from the community.”
2 later decisions 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.