Varner v. Martin’s Empirical Analysis
1883
Citation profile
2 district · 37 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 44 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2022 · most notably Kelo v. City of New London (2005), Clark v. Nash (1905)
2 district · 37 state decisions — followed in 15 states
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 The West River Bridge Company v. Joseph Dix · David Wilkinson v. Thomas Leland · Brooklyn Park Commissioners v. Armstrong · Bloodgood v. Mohawk & Hudson Railroad · Sadler v. Langham
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 44 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is true that there is neither in our Constitution nor in the Constitution of other states any express provision forbidding that private property should be taken for the private use of another, or any constitutional provision forbidding the Legislature to pass laws whereby the private property of one citizen may be taken and transferred to another for his private use, without the consent of the owner. It was doubtless regarded as unnecessary to insert such a provision in the Constitution or Bill of Rights, as the exercise of such an arbitrary power of transferring by legislation the property of one person to another without his consent was contrary to the fundamental principles of every republican government; and in a republican government neither the legislative, executive, nor judicial department can possess unlimited power. Such power as that of taking the private property of one and transferring it to another for his own use is not in its nature legislative, and it is only legislative power, which, by the Constitution, is conferred on the Legislature. Such an act, if passed by the Legislature, would not, in its nature, be a law, but would really he an act of robbery; the exercise of an arbitrary power not conferred on the Legislature. There is an entire concurrence of all the authorities in the proposition that private property cannot be taken for private use, either with or without compensation.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. King v. Hatfield““Where the land is condemned for public buildings or a public park or the like, and public officers have complete control of the property, the act of the Legislature authorizing the condemnation is clearly constitutional, for the use for which the property is condemned is obviously a public use.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Barnes v. Hill
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.