Sanford v. Prentice’s Empirical Analysis
1871
Citation profile
27 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently May 1966 · most notably Montgomery County Fiscal Court v. Trimble (1898), In re Denny (1901)
27 state decisions — followed in 19 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.
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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“1 ‘ The question upon the construction of Section Two is, whether the words ‘a majority of the legal voters of said district,’ as there used, mean a majority of all the persons in the district qualified to vote, or only a majority of those attending the meeting and actually casting their votes. A somewhat similar question came up in Gillespie v. Palmer, 20 Wis. 544 , and the reasoning of this court in that case is in some respects applicable. The question there was upon the meaning and application of the words ‘a majority of all the votes cast at such election, ’ found in the proviso of Sec. 1, Art. Ill of the constitution, for the extension of the right of suffrage. The point was, whether the majority required was only of all the votes east lipón the subject of extending the right of suffrage, or whether it was a majority of all the votes cast at the election, regardless of the subjects upon which they were given, or including those given upon all other subjects. This court held to the former as the sound and true interpretation, and in so doing asserted, as a fundamental principle or rule in our form of government, that wherever a question is submitted to the decision or action of a majority of voters, the meaning is the decision or action of a majority of those persons qualified to vote and who do in fact vote upon the question or proposition submitted, unless some different intention is clearly expressed in tlie act or instrument providing' for the submission, or plainly ”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““Section 2. A majority of the legal voters of said district may, at any legally called special or annual meeting of said voters, determine the amount of money so to be levied and collected, and the time of collecting said money, and, when so determined, said tax shall be collected in the same manner as other taxes are collected in said district,””
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.