Brix v. Clatsop County’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

7 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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““If this may be done for the construction of a court house, it may be done for highways, bridges, poor farms, hospitals, jails, and the like corporate expenses, and the property of the taxpayers may thus be burdened for years to come, contrary to the provisions and spirit of the constitution. It would not be particularly comforting to a taxpayer so situated to be told, while groaning under such special levies, extending hopelessly into the future, that he could congratulate himself that he lived in a county which was not indebted more than $5,000. The reasoning which results in such a conclusion is to us unsound. The constitution was intended to protect the taxpayers. * * * Swanson v. City of Ottumwa, 118 Iowa, 161 ( 91 N. W. 1048 , 59 L. R. A. 620), is contrary to this view; but the question decided in that case arose about the same time in a case pending in the circuit court of appeals, and was there decided adversely to that of the Iowa court. Ottumwa v. City Water Co., 119 Fed. 315 ( 56 C. C. A. 219 , 59 L. R. A. 604). The opinion in the latter case, written by Judge Lochren, was concurred in by Judges Sanborn and Thayer, and is a clear, able and convincing decision, and seems to us a more logical, reasonable, and safe one than that of the Iowa court.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Brunk v. City of Des Moines