Wheeler v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 114 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 123 later decisions — most recently July 2021 · most notably Attorney General v. Johnson (1978), Condon v. State (1993)
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 114 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 Roe v. Wade · Dandridge v. Williams · San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez · McGowan v. State of Maryland Gallagher · Shapiro v. Thompson
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 123 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“" '[W]here statutory language is plain and free from ambiguity and expresses a definite and sensible meaning, courts are not at liberty to disregard the natural import of words with a view toward making the statute express an intention which is different from its plain meaning.’ ” Wheeler v. State, 281 Md. 593, 596 (1977), quoting Purifoy v. Merc.-Safe Dep. & Trust, 273 Md. 58, 66 (1974).”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The basic fallacy, however, in the reasoning of the Court of Special Appeals is that the statute cannot be read so that the exemption pertains only to the showing of motion pictures as such. Thus, an usher in the exempted class who distributes to the theatre patrons a program concerning the film being shown, which program itself constituted obscene matter, would not be subject to the prohibitions of §418. The bookstore employee, however, or any other person not within the exempted class, who distributed that same program, would be subject to punishment for violation of the statute. Thus, the law operates on some persons and not upon others like situated or circumstanced.” Id. at 605, 380 A.2d at 1059 .”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The rules by which this [equal protection] contention must be tested, as is shown by repeated decisions of this court, are these: 1. The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not take from the State the power to classify ... but admits of the exercise of a wide scope of discretion in that regard, and avoids what is done only when it is without any reasonable basis, and therefore is purely arbitrary. 2. A classification having some reasonable basis does not offend against that clause merely because it is not made with mathematical nicety or because in practice it results in some inequality. 3. When the classification in such a law is called in question, if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain it, the existence of that state of facts at the time the law was enacted must be assumed. 4. One who assails the classification in such a law must carry the burden of showing that it does not rest on any reasonable basis, but is essentially arbitrary.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.