Williams v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1942
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 1976
2 federal appellate · 6 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.
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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The work of necessity covered by the exception in the statute is not merely one of absolute or physical necessity, not merely something required to furnish physical existence or safety of person or property, but embraces as well all work reasonably essential to the economic, social or moral welfare of the people, viewed in the light of the habits and customs of the age in which they live and of the community in which they reside. While the word necessity is elastic and relative, and should be construed with reference to the conditions under which we live, the elasticity should not be extended so far as to cover that which is merely desirable and not reasonably essential.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Rich v. Commonwealth
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.