Hobbs v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1893
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 2 district · 60 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 71 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2015 · most notably Harmelin v. Michigan (1991), Weems v. United States (1910)
3 federal appellate · 2 district · 60 state decisions — followed in 10 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 Fahnestock v. State · Mergentheim v. State · Coffin v. Anderson · Pattee v. State · Davis v. State
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 71 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Those degrading punishments which in any state had become obsolete before its existing Constitution was adopted, we think, may well be held forbidden by it as cruel and unusual. We may well doubt the right to establish the whipping post and the pillory in states where they were never recognized as instruments of punishment, or in states whose Constitutions, revised since public opinion had banished them, have forbidden cruel and unusual punishment. In such states the public sentiment must be regarded as having condemned them as ‘cruel,’ and any punishment which, if ever employed at all, has become altogether obsolete, must certainly be looked upon as ‘unusual.’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Mickle v. Henrichs
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.