Whitner v. Woodruff’s Empirical Analysis
1914
Citation profile
17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently December 2012
17 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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"From this language we understand the holding to be that the county commissioners may change the proposed route within a municipality after a different location has been submitted to popular vote as the one to be paved. To this we cannot give our assent. While the citizens might, if requested, have such confidence in their officials as to give them power in general terms, yet, when the request is for specific limited power, those officials must keep within its limitations. If the county commissioners obtain the consent of the people by a vote to pave, at public expense, a designated road or street, those owning property fronting upon that road or street may justly complain, if the officials undertake to pave, not that street, but another parallel street three blocks distant."”
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.