Colorado Common Cause v. Bledsoe’s Empirical Analysis
1991
Citation profile
17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently May 2022
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.
Relationships
Relies on Baker v. Carr · Powell v. McCormack · William Marbury v. James Madison · Tenney v. Brandhove · Supreme Court of Virginia v. Consumers Union of the United States, Inc.
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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Prominent on the surface of any case held to involve a political question is found a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it; or the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion; or the impossibility of a court's undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government; or an unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'traditionally within the role of the judiciary to resolve.' " Colo. Med. Soc'y v. Hickenlooper, 2012 COA 121 , ¶¶ 1516, 353 P.3d 396 ( cert. granted Oct. 7, 2013) (quoting Common Cause, 810 P.2d at 206 ); cf. Colo. Gen. Assembly v. Lamm, 704 P.2d 1371 , 1378 (Colo. 1985) ("[I]t is peculiarly the province of the judiciary to interpret the constitution and say what the law is.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[the judiciary's avoidance of deciding political questions finds its roots in the Colorado Constitution's provi sions separating the powers of state government.”
2 later decisions 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.