Wilkinson v. Hale’s Empirical Analysis
1939
Citation profile
17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently March 2006
17 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 Burks v. Walker · Roberts v. Ledgerwood · School Dist. No. 85 v. School Dist. No. 71 · Key v. Donnell · Thompson v. Stanley
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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is not essential in order that a law be general in its operation as distinguished from local or special that it be universal in its application and operate the same in every section of the state and upon all persons, individuals or corporations alike. On the contrary the legislature may classify for legislative purposes, but a classification so adopted must be neither arbitrary or capricious and must bear a reasonable relation to the object to be accomplished. * * * ””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage““In order for a law to be general in its nature and to have a uniform operation, it is not necessary that it shall operate upon every person and every locality in the state. A law may be general and have a local application or apply to a designated class if it operates equally upon all the subjects within the class for which it was adopted. * * * But, where a statute operates upon a class, the classification must not be capricious or arbitrary and must be reasonable and pertain to some peculiarity in the subj ect-matter calling for the legislation. As between the persons and places included within the operation of the law and those omitted, there must be some distinctive characteristic upon which a different treatment may be reasonably founded and that furnishes a practical and real basis for discrimination.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage““Local or special laws are all those that rest on a false or deficient classification. Their vice is that thpy do not embrace all the class that they should naturally embrace. They create preference and establish inequality. They apply to persons, things, and places possessed of certain qualities or situations; and exclude from their effect other persons, things, or places which- are not. dissimilar in this respect.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Wells v. Childers
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.