Hunt v. Atkinson’s Empirical Analysis
1929
Citation profile
7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently April 1971
7 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 C.S. Eastham v. B.A. Steinhagen · Vincent v. State ex rel. Wayland · City of Waco v. Higginson
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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The point now made is that, since the adoption of the home rule amendment to the Constitution (article 11, sec. 5), the Legislature is without power to grant a charter to a city such as Houston, and that therefore it has no power to do indirectly that which it cannot do directly, to wit, pass a law validating the boundaries of the city established in a way confessedly bad at the time. . . . Now, article 1165 (the enabling act of the Home Rule Amendment) of the Revised Statutes 1925, declares, with reference to the right of the people of a municipality to select their charter, that the same shall be ‘subject to such limitations as may be prescribed by the Legislature,’ and shall contain nothing ‘inconsistent with the Constitution or general laws of this State.’ If the last clause by way of limitation stood alone, it might with great force be argued that home rule cities possess exclusive power superior to that of the Legislature with respect to all municipal matters not inconsistent with the Constitution, since the term ‘general laws’ might be construed to mean laws of the state other than municipal laws. There is excellent authority elsewhere throughout the country for this contention. But this is not the sole limitation imposed upon the municipality. Their charters must be ‘subject to such limitations as may be prescribed by the Legislature.’ This clearly shows that the legislative power is in all things supreme; that the power of the municipality is subject in all respects”
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.