Haynes v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis
1855
Citation profile
55 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 55 later decisions — most recently June 2025 · most notably City of Indianapolis v. Kingsbury (1884), City of Chicago v. Union Building Ass'n (1882)
55 state decisions — followed in 21 states
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 The President Recorder and Trustees of the City of Cincinnati v. The Lessee of Edward White · Livingston v. Mayor · In re Mayor · Conner v. President of New Albany · Crookshank v. Kellogg
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 55 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Under the constitution of 1816, it is not doubted that the legislature had power to vacate roads, streets, &c.; and of the propriety of their doing so they were the exclusive judges, so far as their acts might affect the citizens of the state at large; but it is equally clear that they had no such power, where their action would take away a private right. ... The right to use a street in a town adjoining a lot abutting upon it, is as much property as the lot itself, and the legislature has as little power to take away one as the other.””
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.