Police Jury v. Britton’s Empirical Analysis
82 U.S. 566 · 1872
Citation profile
9 federal appellate · 29 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 69 later decisions (9 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 1973 · most notably Norton v. Shelby County (1886), Hitchcock v. Galveston (1877)
9 federal appellate · 29 state decisions — followed in 15 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 Cammack v. Lewis
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 69 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It seems to us to be a power quite distinct from that of incurring indebtedness for improvements actually authorized and undertaken, the justness and validity’ of which may always be inquired into. It [the power to issue commercial paper] is a power which ought not to be implied from the mere authority to make such improvements. It is one thing for county or parish trustees to have the power to incur obligations for work actually done in behalf pf the county or parish, and to give proper vouchers therefor, and a totally different thing to have the power of issuing unimpeachable paper obligations which may be multiplied to an indefinite extent.””
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.