Miller v. Wilson’s Empirical Analysis
236 U.S. 373 · 1915
Citation profile
31 federal appellate · 17 district · 206 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 441 later decisions (89 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2009 · most notably Shapiro v. Thompson (1969), Meyer v. State of Nebraska (1923)
31 federal appellate · 17 district · 206 state decisions — followed in 32 states
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 Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co. · Lawton v. Steele · Barbier v. Connolly · Connolly v. Union Sewer Pipe Co. · Gulf Ry Co v. Ellis
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 441 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"[t]he legislature is free to recognize degrees of harm, and it may confine its restrictions to those classes of cases where the need is deemed to be the clearest." Miller v. Wilson, 236 U.S. 373, 384 , 35 S.Ct. 342 , 59 L.Ed. 628 (1915). And "if the law presumably hits the evil where it is most felt, it is not to be overthrown because there are other instances to which it might have been applied." Id.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Even though all restrictions on political, personal and contractual rights were taken away, and she stood, so far as statutes are concerned, upon an absolutely equal plane with him, it would still be true that she is so constituted that she will rest upon and look to him for protection; that her physical structure and a proper discharge of her maternal functions — having in view not merely her. own health but the well-being of the race — justify legislation to protect her from the greed as well as the passion of man. The limitations which this statute places upon her contractual powers, upon her right to agree with her employer as'to the time she shall labor, are not imposed solely for her benefit, but also largely for the benefit of all.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The contention as to the various omissions which are noted-in the objections here urged ignores the well-established principle that the legislature is not bound, in order to support the constitutional validity of its regulation, to extend it to all cases which it might possibly reach.””
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.