Sheboygan Co. v. Parker’s Empirical Analysis
70 U.S. 93 · 1865
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 34 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 44 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 1996 · most notably Coulter v. Pool (1921), Provident Life Trust Co of Philadelphia v. Mercer County Ky (1898)
2 federal appellate · 34 state decisions — followed in 13 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.
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 44 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A public officer is a public agent, and as such acts only on behalf of his principal, the public, whose sanction is generally considered as necessary to give the act performed by the officer the authority and power of a public act or law. The most general characteristic of a public [county] officer which distinguishes him from a mere employee, is that a public duty is delegated and intrusted [sic] to him, as agent, the performance of which is an exercise of a part of the governmental functions of the particular political unit for which he, as agent, is acting.... As a matter of course, in keeping with these definitions, a county officer is a public officer ... and is selected by the political subdivision of the state called the ‘county’ to represent that governmental unit, continuously and as part of the regular and permanent administration of public power, in carrying out certain acts with the performance of which it is charged on behalf of the public.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“They do not exercise any of the political functions of county officers, such as levying taxes, etc. They do not exercise, 'continuously, and as a part of the regular and permanent administration of the government, any important public power, trust or duties.'”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Osborn v. Henry“An officer of the county is one by whom a county performs its usual political functions; its functions of government.”
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.