State v. Atkin’s Empirical Analysis
1902
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently May 1974
16 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.
Relationships
Relies on State ex rel. Bulkeley v. Williams · People Ex Rel. McLean v. Flagg · State ex rel. Godard v. Topeka Water Co. · State v. Board of Commissioners · State ex rel. Godard v. Downs
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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Municipal corporations owe their origin to and derive their powers and rights wholly from the legislature. It breathes into them the breath of life, without which they cannot exist. As it creates, so it may destroy. If it may destroy, it may abridge and control. Unless there is some constitutional limitation on the right, the legislature might by a single act, if we can suppose it capable of so great a folly and so great a wrong, sweep from existence all of the municipal corporations in the state, and the corporations could not prevent it. "We know of no limitation on this right so far as the corporations themselves are concerned. They are, so to phrase it,-the mere tenants at will of the legislature.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.