175 Ill. 2d 166 - Lucas v. Lakin’s Empirical Analysis
1997
Citation profile
143 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 151 later decisions — most recently March 2026 · most notably 216 Ill. 2d 100 - Avery v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance (2005), 228 Ill. 2d 200 - Cinkus v. Village of Stickney Municipal Officers Electoral Board (2008)
143 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 158 Ill. 2d 391 - Bonaguro v. the County Officers Electoral Board · 117 Ill. 2d 417 - Vuletich v. United States Steel Corp. · 171 Ill. 2d 297 - Tully v. Edgar · People v. Zaremba · 167 Ill. 2d 431 - People v. Tucker
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 151 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“When construing the meaning of a disputed statute, this court's primary objective is to ascertain and give effect to the intent of the legislature. [Citation.] Legislative intent is best determined by examining the statutory language, which must be given its plain and ordinary meaning.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. NADHIR v. Salomon“tread cautiously when construing statutory language which restricted the people's right to endorse and nominate the candidate of their choice.”
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.