Wayne County v. Hathcock’s Empirical Analysis
2004
Citation profile
35 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 41 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Kelo v. City of New London (2005), City of Norwood v. Horney (2006)
35 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.
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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he interpretation that should be given [the Constitution] is that which reasonable minds, the great mass of the people themselves, would give it. ". . . [T]he intent to be arrived at is that of the people, and it is not to be supposed that they have looked for any dark or abstruse meaning in the words employed, but rather that they have accepted them in the sense most obvious to the common understanding . . . . "[ [15] ]”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“The only instance in which we are constitutionally authorized to issue an advisory opinion is upon the request of either house of the Legislature or the Governorand, then, only `on important questions of law upon solemn occasions as to the constitutionality of legislation after it has been enacted into law but before its effective date.'”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[t]he property of no person shall be taken for public use, without just compensation therefor.”
1 later decision 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.