Hall v. Pierce’s Empirical Analysis
1957
Citation profile
4 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently November 1995
4 district · 3 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 Guthrie v. Gardner · Welton v. Divine
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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'It is the duty of the officer having a power of appointing'... 'to make the best appointment in his power according to his judgment at the time when he makes the appointment. The public have a right to demand this. . . . [T]he public good would be injured if a promise to make an appointment were held to be legally binding, so as to control the exercise of that judgment which the appointing officer ought to exercise when he makes an appointment. . .. [T]he right of appointment is not the property of the appointing officer. And he has no right to barter it, or to dispose of it. It is merely a political power entrusted to him, to be exercised, not to be sold.1”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“A public office is not property, but the mere right to exercise a public function. It is not the subject of sale, purchase, or encumbrance, and cannot be acquired in any such manner; nor can the unearned salary or compensation of a public officer ordinarily be sold or assigned. A public office should be conferred solely upon consideration of ability, integrity, fidelity, and fitness for the position, and it is the duty of a public officer having the power of appointment to make the best appointment in his power. Consequently he should not be deprived of the exercise of his best judgment by any contract previously made or obligation previously assumed.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“We do not believe that a public officer, who has authority to appoint another to a salaried berth, can enter into a bargain . . . whereby he will appoint [one person] and no other.”
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.