Sims v. Balkcom’s Empirical Analysis
1964
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 41 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 54 later decisions — most recently March 2019 · most notably Wainwright v. Simpson (1966), Whippler v. Balkcom (1965)
6 federal appellate · 41 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 Robinson v. State of California · Trop v. Dulles · Weems v. United States · Kemmler · State of Louisiana Francis v. Resweber
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 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“we would question the judicial right of any American judge to construe the American Constitution contrary to its apparent meaning, the American history of the clause, and its construction by American courts, simply because the numerous nations and States have abandoned capital punishment for rape”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Conley v. Pate“so long as [the General Assembly does] not provide cruel and unusual punishments, such as disgraced the civilization of former ages, and make one shudder with horror to read of them, as drawing, quartering, burning, etc., the Constitution does not put any limit upon legislative discretion.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Conley v. Pate“So long as the legislature provides the death penalty for any crime, this court will uphold it for forcible rape, as there can be no more reprehensible crime. Accordingly the sentence of death violates neither of the Constitutions as contended.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Street v. State
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.