Spear v. Ward’s Empirical Analysis
1917
Citation profile
41 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 43 later decisions — most recently February 2019 · most notably Nourse v. City of Russellville (1935), Jefferson County v. City of Birmingham (1951)
41 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 City of Eufaula v. McNab · Town of Greensboro v. Ehrenreich · Intendant of Marion v. Chandler · Mayor of Wetumpka v. Wetumpka Wharf Co. · Durgin v. Minot
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 43 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“will be indulged by the courts, with the presumptions in their favor, as to their necessity, propriety, and validity, in the absence of a showing to the effect that they are unreasonable, arbitrary, unduly oppressive, or inconsistent with the legislative policy of the state”
1 later decision 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.