Walton v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1948
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 2 district · 12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently March 1989
3 federal appellate · 2 district · 12 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 Nippert v. City of Richmond · People v. . Ringe · Prata Undertaking Co. v. State Board of Embalming & Funeral Directing · Lewellyn v. Pittsburgh, B. & L. E. R. · Watts v. Commonwealth
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.
““(1,2) Statutes of the kind under consideration generally have been considered valid. The undertaking business is one of a public or quasi-public nature, closely related to the health, safety and general welfare of a community, and is therefore a business which under the police power may be subjected to regulation and control. In the handling of dead bodies there is a possibility of contagion and certain sanitary practices must be carried out. A state has the power to establish boards of undertaking and embalming such as has been done in Virginia. “(8) It is also well recognized that a State may require undertakers and embalmers to secure licenses before they engage in the practice of their profession, and as a condition to securing a license applicants may be required to possess certain qualifications such as being graduates of certain prescribed schools where the profession is taught.””
1 later decision 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.