Williard v. . Weavil’s Empirical Analysis
1943
Citation profile
14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently April 1991
14 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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We are not inadvertent to the presumption against intestacy, called to our attention by the plaintiffs; but this rule, however strong, is but a rule of construction, which must yield to the true intent of the testator when it can be ascertained. ... It does not authorize the Court to make a will or to add to a testamentary disposition something which, by reasonable inference, is not there, or to make intestacy impossible.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.