Wilkins v. West’s Empirical Analysis
2002
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions — most recently December 2023 · most notably Arizona Minority Coalition for Fair Redistricting v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (2005), Stephenson v. Bartlett (2003)
22 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
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1971 (Civil Rights Act of 1957) · 42 U.S.C. § 1973 (§ 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965)
Relies on Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife · Wesberry v. Sanders · United States v. Hays · Miller v. Johnson · Bush v. Al Vera Lawson
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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“clearly erroneous, arbitrary, or wholly unwarranted.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[w]hile ease of travel within a district is a factor to consider when resolving issues of compactness and contiguity, resting the constitutional test of contiguity solely on physical access within the district imposes an artificial requirement which reflects neither the actual need of the residents of the district nor the panoply of factors which must be considered by the [Legislature] in the design of a district. Short of an intervening land mass totally severing two sections of an electoral district, there is no per se test for the constitutional requirement of contiguity. Each district must be examined separately.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Although the record shows that travel between [some] precincts and the remainder of the district requires travel through another district, there is nothing in this record showing that such access is unreasonable, unduly burdensome, or adversely impacts the ability of residents to secure meaningful representation of their interests or effective communication with their elected represen-tativei”
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.