Clark v. Holt’s Empirical Analysis
1951
Citation profile
38 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 38 later decisions — most recently February 2020 · most notably City of Middletown v. McGee (1988), Town of Mt. Pleasant v. City of Racine (1964)
38 state decisions — followed in 13 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 Vestal v. Little Rock · Wild v. People ex rel. Stephens · 37 Cal. App. 79 - People v. City of Lemoore · Park v. Hardin, Commissioner of Revenues · City of Wichita Falls v. Bowen
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 38 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ * * * The legal as well as the popular idea of a municipal corporation in this country, both by name and use, is that of oneness, community, locality, vicinity; a collective body, not several bodies; a collective body of inhabitants—that is, a body of people collected or gathered together in one mass, not separated into distinct masses, and having a community of interest because residents of the same place, not different places. So as to territorial extent, the idea of a city is one of unity, not of plurality; of compactness or contiguity, not separation or segregation. * * * ””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage““It is apparent that the 50-foot strip is merely included for the purpose of connecting the piece of ground at the west end thereof with other territory in the village. It is also apparent that the piece of ground at the west end of the strip is not in fact contiguous to grounds in the village other than that strip. The use of that strip to connect the tract at its western extremity with other territory in the village is a mere subterfuge, and not a compliance with the law. It is useless to discuss the plea farther.””
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.