Julie Gerard Biggs’s Empirical Analysis
1999
Citation profile
5 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently May 2025
5 district · 2 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 Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Anderson v. Creighton · Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois · Connick v. Myers · Malley v. Briggs
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.
“Many cases have addressed the role of attorneys in city government, and almost all of them have found such attorneys to be policymakers subject to patronage discharges. “ ‘All circuit court decisions-and almost all other court decisions-involving attorneys in government services, other than public defenders, have held that Elrod/ Branti do not protect these positions.’ ” ... In finding city attorneys, and assistant and deputy city attorneys, to be policymak-ing officials, the courts have relied on several factors. Cases have considered the fact that the position requires technical expertise, and often involved performing discretionary functions, advising city officials, representing the city, planning to implement city goals, drafting ordinances, negotiating contracts, and rendering legal opinions.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“(1) it has suffered an `injury in fact' that is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical; (2) the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant; and (3) it is likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“family was silenced in Redlands community politics.”
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.