Compton v. Romans’s Empirical Analysis
1993
Citation profile
5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently December 2010
5 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 Barr v. Matteo · Gregoire v. Biddle · Kentucky State Racing Commission v. Fuller · Tanner v. Stevenson · McAlister Company v. Jenkins
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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“If in the discharge of a duty imposed by law a public official clothed with quasi judicial powers may have suspended over his head continually the threat of libel suits, it is apparent that his official conduct would be tempered by and tainted with the fear that he might be unjustly subjectéd to such actions. The policy of the law is therefore, and the reason of the rule is; that, although upon rare occasions judges and other public officials upon whom are imposed by law judicial or quasi judicial duties may maliciously slander or calumniate in the exercise of their authority, it is better that they should be protected upon such occasions by this absolute privilege than that the great body of such officials in the conscientious exercise of their duties should be hampered- continually by the threat of such civil actions.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“This Court has long recognized the desirability of granting certain high-ranking officials absolute immunity, not as an emolument or perquisite of office or for their personal protection, but to prevent timid, weak and vacillating performance of public duties and likewise prevent undesirable utilization of time and energy in the defense of litigation. (Citations omitted).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[Absolute immunity] is a rule . . . of public policy, not designed to protect the malicious official from the consequences of his wrongful act, but to protect the whole public from weak and vacillating public service by those upon whom such duties are imposed by law.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. McCollum v. Garrett
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.