Kilbourne v. . St. John’s Empirical Analysis
1874
Citation profile
6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently July 1963
6 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““To permit every taxpayer in the. state who believes that a tax for an unconstitutional purpose had been imppsed by the legislature to commence an action in equity against the state treasurer to restrain him from applying the proceeds in his hands to the purpose directed, and compel him to distribute the fund among the taxpayers of the state, and upon the same principle every taxpayer of a city, county, town, or other municipal corporation, to maintain a like action for like purposes, against the official custodian of its funds, upon the ground that the tax, or some portion, was not authorized by law, would, I think, lead to most alarming results. It would be the direct opposite of one of the acknowledged sources of equity jurisdiction, which is that it exists when necessary to prevent a great number of suits. This would, I think, inevitably cause an immense number.””
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.