Smith v. Edwards’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently October 2008
16 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 Friendship Heights v. Funger · Barlow v. Friendship Heights Citizens' Committee · 46 Md. App. 452 - Smith v. Edwards
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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is a general and undisputed proposition of law that a municipal corporation possesses and can exercise the following powers and no others: First: Those granted in express words; second, those necessarily or fairly implied in or incident to the powers expressly granted; third, those essential to the declared objects and purposes of the corporation — not simply convenient, but indispensable.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. (2002)
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.