Webb v. Adams’s Empirical Analysis
1929
Citation profile
68 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 68 later decisions — most recently April 1997 · most notably 162 W. Va. 672 - Pauley v. Kelly (1979), McCutchen v. Huckabee (1997)
68 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 Poindexter v. Greenhow · Williams v. Standard Oil Co. · Employers' Liability Cases · Damselle Howard v. Illinois Central Railroad Company · Spraigue v. Thompson
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 68 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The General Assembly shall not pass any local or special act. This amendment shall not prohibit the repeal of local or special acts.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Dupree v. State · Smith v. Cole““The exclusion of a single county from the operation of the law makes it local, and it cannot be both a general and a local statute. . . . The courts look to the substance and practical operation of a law in determining whether it is general, special or local, and if its operation must necessarily be special or local, it must be held to be special or local legislation, whatever may be its form. ... A local law is one that applies to any subdivision or subdivisions of the State less than the whole. ... A law is special in a constitutional sense when, by force of an inherent limitation, it arbitrarily separates some person, place or thing from those upon which, but for such separation, it would operate. . .”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Humphrey v. Thompson“Numerous measures were enacted in all sessions of the General Assembly, general in their terms and nature, and from the operation of which from one or more of the counties of the state were excepted, and this amendment was adopted to remedy the evil, and the power of the General Assembly to enact local or special legislation was withdrawn, the General Assembly being prohibited by its terms from passing any local or special act.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Owen v. Dalton
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.