Maynard v. Hill’s Empirical Analysis
125 U.S. 190 · 1888
Citation profile
99 federal appellate · 58 district · 444 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 802 later decisions (68 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2025 · most notably Boddie v. Connecticut (1971), Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia (1967)
99 federal appellate · 58 district · 444 state decisions — followed in 45 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 Kilbourn v. Thompson · Loan Association v. Topeka · Stuart v. . Palmer · Van Wyck v. Knevals
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 802 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Marriage, as creating the most important relation in life, as having more to do with the morals and civilization of a people than any other institution, has always been subject to the control of the legislature. That body prescribes the age at which parties may contract to marry, the procedure or form essential to constitute marriage, the duties and obligations it creates, its effects upon the property rights of both, present and prospective, and the acts which may constitute grounds for its dissolution.”
39 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Cope v. Cope · Andrews v. Andrews“the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[i]t is not, then, a contract within the meaning of the clause of the constitution which prohibits the impairing the obligation of contracts. It is, rather, a social relation, like that of parent and child, the obligations of which arise not from the consent of concurring minds, but are the creation of the law itself, a relation the most important, as affecting the happiness of individuals, the first step from barbarism to incipient civilization, the purest tie of social life and the true basis of human progress.”
3 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.