285 F. Supp. 556 - Smith v. Hill’s Empirical Analysis
1968
Citation profile
2 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently March 1994
2 district · 4 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 28 U.S.C. § 1343 · 28 U.S.C. § 2201 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Connally v. General Construction Co. · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. Y Button · Dombrowski v. Pfister · Maryland Casualty Co. v. Pacific Coal & Oil Co. · Local Loan Co. v. Hunt
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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““These [vagrancy] statutes are in a class by themselves, in view of the familiar abuses to which they are put. See Note, 47 Col.L.Rev. 613, 625. Definiteness is designedly avoided so as to allow the net to be cast at large, to enable men to be caught who are vaguely undesirable in the eyes of the police and prosecution, although not chargeable with any particular offense.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““No definition of * * * ‘visible means of support’ is provided or available. There is no rule of conduct in or on the face of the ordinance. It is difficult if not altogether impossible for any citizen (or other person for that matter) to determine what behavior, or failure to observe what code of behavior, will render him criminal as a vagrant, a tramp, a person under suspicion. The ordinance sweeps so broadly that it may be invoked, at the whim of the authorities, against every member of the community who is not living in the style to which the particular authorities set as a standard. Prosecution and conviction depend upon a judge’s subjective determination that a man is a vagrant or a tramp — terms of no fixed meaning; or that he arouses suspicion and lacks whatever visible means of support are deemed sufficient to satisfy the current unexpressed, unexpressable official standards for mandatory affluence.” 285 F.Supp. at 560 .”
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.