Lewis v. Drake’s Empirical Analysis
1982
Citation profile
10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently December 2011
10 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 Clements v. Fashing · Gulf Oil Corp. v. Copp Paving Co. · Staples v. State Ex Rel. King · Williams v. Castleman · Dean v. State Ex Rel. Bailey
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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Public officers should be free to perform their duties without having their authority questioned incidentally in litigation between other parties. They should not be called on to defend their authority unless a proper legal officer of the State has determined that the question raised is serious and deserves judicial consideration as required by [statute]. This settled policy of the State is exemplified by cases holding that the decision of the Attorney General or the district or county attorney to present the information under that statute is a matter of discretion to be exercised for the protection of the public....”
4 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.