Ball v. James’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
65 federal appellate · 35 district · 91 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 266 later decisions (5 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2024 · most notably Rice v. Cayetano (2000), 142 Ill. 2d 54 - Fumarolo v. Chicago Board of Education (1990)
65 federal appellate · 35 district · 91 state decisions — followed in 18 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedJames v. Ball (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 43 U.S.C. § 371 (Northwestern New Mexico Rural Water Projects Act) · 43 U.S.C. § 522
Relies on Baker v. Carr · Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. · Reynolds v. Sims · Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co. · Federal Crop Ins Corporation v. Merrill
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 266 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“such normal functions of government as the maintenance of streets, the operation of schools, or sanitation, health, or welfare services,”
17 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“a special-purpose unit of government assigned the performance of functions affecting definable groups of constituents more than other constituents.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“did not exercise the sort of governmental powers that invoke the strict demands of Reynolds .”
2 later decisions 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.