Schneider v. Rockefeller’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
18 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 38 later decisions — most recently May 2012 · most notably Pearson v. Koster (2012), Fonfara v. Reapportionment Commission (1992)
18 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 Reynolds v. Sims · Avery v. Midland County · Whitcomb v. Chavis · Fortson v. Dorsey · Swann v. Adams
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.
“There may be good reason for treating local government apportionment as a distinct problem. As the court noted in Abate [v. Mundt, 403 U.S. 182 , 91 S.Ct. 1904 , 29 L.Ed.2d 399 (1971) ], local legislative bodies have fewer members and local legislative districts have fewer voters than their State and national counterparts. Thus, it may be more difficult to devise apportionment plans that comply with numerical equality at the local level. Furthermore, there are over 80,000 units of local government serving various functions. A certain flexibility may, therefore, be desirable to facilitate intergovernmental cooperation at this level. 31 N.Y.2d at 428 n. 3, 293 N.E.2d at 71 n. 3, 340 N.Y.S.2d at 895 n. 3.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[T]he constitutional requirements of compactness [and] contiguity ____ were adopted for the salutary purpose of averting the political gerrymander and at present are the only means available to the courts for containing that pernicious practice. If the Legislature plays fast and loose with these constitutional requirements, it risks having a districting plan set aside.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Diaz v. Silver“The contiguity requirement mandates that there be no division between one part of a district's territory and the rest of the district; in other words, contiguous territory is territory touching, adjoining and connected, as distinguished from territory separated by other territory.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. (2000)
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.