Bowen v. Green’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently July 2012
7 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 Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese for United States and Canada v. Milivojevich · Townes Associates, Ltd. v. City of Greenville · Bramlett v. Young · Turbeville v. Morris · Morris Street Baptist Church v. Dart
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.
“The Bowen court explained the reasoning behind this rule: The premise upon which the foregoing authority is built is that the ecclesiastical matter was decided by the duly constituted ecclesiastical body having jurisdiction. Obviously then, if a decision is reached by some body not having ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the matter, then the civil court would not be bound by that decision. The appropriate remedy, therefore, would not be to impose an ecclesiastical dictate of the civil court but would rather be to restore the status quo prevailing before the unauthorized action. Once determination is made that the proper ecclesiastical authority has acted in its duly constituted manner, no civil review of the substantive ecclesiastical matter may take place as this would be prohibited by Amendments I and XIV of the Federal Constitution and Article I, Section 2 of the State Constitution.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. McCain v. Brightharp“It is not for this court to determine who shall or shall not be members of the Mount Zion Baptist Church. It is not for this court, to dictate procedure for the church to follow. It is the function of this court, however, in these circumstances, to assure that the church itself has spoken. If it has, this court inquires no further. If it has not, this court may restore the status quo to enable the church to act. We note that this case deals with a congregational church. The situation is substantially different when a hierarchical church is involved. In that situation any judicial relief, if appropriate, would ordinarily await final determination by the highest hierarchical tribunal having jurisdiction over ecclesiastical matters.”
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.