Yick Wo v. Hopkins’s Empirical Analysis
118 U.S. 356 · 1886
Citation profile
1,198 federal appellate · 459 district · 1,722 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5,253 later decisions (351 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Roe v. Wade (1973), District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman (1983)
1,198 federal appellate · 459 district · 1,722 state decisions — followed in 50 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 Cannon v. United States · Slaughter-House Cases the Butchers' Benevolent Association of New Orleans v. The Crescent City Live · Barbier v. Connolly · Ex parte Virginia
Cited together with Cannon v. United States · Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. · Washington v. Davis · Bolling v. Sharpe · Oyler v. Boles
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 5,253 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a fundamental political right, because preservative of all rights.”
132 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Spies v. Illinois · Davis v. Beason“Though the law itself be fair on its face and impartial in appearance, yet, if it is applied and administered by public authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so as practically to make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons in similar circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of equal justice is still within the prohibition of the Constitution.”
110 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““In the present eases we are not obliged to reason from the probable to the actual, and pass upon the validity of the ordinances complained of, as tried merely by the opportunities which their terms offered, of unequal and unjust discrimination in their administration; for the cases present the ordinances in actual operation, and the facts shown establish an administra tion directed so exclusively against a particular class of persons as to warrant and require the conclusion that, whatever may have been the intent of the ordinances as adopted, they are applied by the public authorities charged with their administration, and thus representing the state itself, with a mind so unequal and oppressive as to amount to a practical denial by the state of that equal pr lection of the laws which is secured to the petitioners, as to all other persons, by the broad and benign provisions of the fourteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States. Though the law itself he fair on its face, and impartial in appearance, yet, if it is applied and administered by publie authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so as practically to make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons in similar circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of equal justice is still within the prohibition of the constitution. * * * The fact of this discrimination is admitted. No reason for it is shown, and the conclusion cannot be resisted that no reason for it exists except hostility t”
10 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.