Phillips v. Head’s Empirical Analysis
1939
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently May 1971
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 Plumb v. Christie · City of Atlanta v. Blackman Health Resort Inc. · Thomas v. Ragsdale · Peginis v. City of Atlanta · McKown v. City of Atlanta
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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Inasmuch as a license to sell spirituous liquors is neither a contract nor a property right in the licensee but a mere permit to do what would otherwise be an offense against the general law, it is, when granted by a municipal corporation, subject at all times to the police powers of that corporation, and the latter, in the absence of any charter restriction upon its authority in this respect, may in the exercise of these powers revoke the license at any time.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Owens v. Rutherford
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.