8 E.H. Smith 439 - People v. . Purdy’s Empirical Analysis
1897
Citation profile
35 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 35 later decisions — most recently September 1973 · most notably People Ex Rel. Devery v. . Coler (1903), Rasin v. Leaverton (1942)
35 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedPeople v. Purdy
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 35 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ The statute, we think' does not contemplate that a person who is disqualified to hold the office may, nevertheless, be lawfully elected upon the chance that subsequently he may, by his own act, or by the happening of some event, remove the disqualification, and thus become entitled to fill it. The better rule is that the electors, in making the choice, must be confined to the selection of such persons only as are not then under any legal disqualification to . exercise its powers and perform its duties. The electors can then know that when the choice is made and legally declared the object for which the election was held has been accomplished, and that there is no legal obstruction in the way to prevent their will, as thus exnressed, from becoming effective.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Burns v. Wiltse
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.