Spurlock v. Sumner County’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 state decisions

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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “First, the question is not whether [the sheriff] acts for Alabama or Monroe County in some categorical, “all or nothing” manner. Our cases on the liability of local governments under § 1983 instruct us to ask whether governmental officials are final policymakers for the local government in a particular area, or on a particular issue.... Thus, we are not seeking to make a characterization of Alabama sheriffs that will hold true for every type of official action they engage in. We simply ask whether [the sheriff] represents the State or the county when he acts in a law enforcement capacity. Second, our inquiry is dependent on an analysis of state law.... This is not to say that state law can answer the question for us by, for example, simply labeling as a state official an official who clearly makes county policy. But our understanding of the actual function of a governmental official, in a particular area, will necessarily be dependent on the definition of the official’s functions under relevant state law....”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Glenda Cooper v. State