Williams v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore Same’s Empirical Analysis
289 U.S. 36 · 1933
Citation profile
157 federal appellate · 36 district · 364 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 729 later decisions (32 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Allied Stores of Ohio, Inc. v. Bowers (1959), Coleman v. Miller (1939)
157 federal appellate · 36 district · 364 state decisions — followed in 35 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedMayor of Baltimore v. Williams (from Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Sproles v. Binford · Hudson County Water Co. v. McCarter · City of Trenton v. New Jersey · Missouri Kansas Texas Railway Company of Texas v. Clay May
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 729 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A municipal corporation, created by a state for the better ordering of government, has no privileges or immunities under the federal constitution which it may invoke in opposition to the will of its creator.”
29 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"The Constitution does not prohibit special laws inflexibly and always. It permits them when there are special evils with which existing general laws are incompetent to cope.... If the evil to be corrected can be seen to be merely fanciful, the injustice or the wrong illusory, the courts may intervene and strike the special statute down."”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It is not the function of a court to determine whether the public policy that finds expression in legislation of this order is well or ill conceived. Otis v. Parker, 187 U. S. 606 , 609, 23 S. Ct. 168 , 47 L. Ed. 323 ; Missouri, Kansas & Texas By. Co. v. May, 194 U. S. 267 , 24 S. Ct. 638 , 48 L. Ed 971 ; Sproles v. Binford, 286 U. S. 374 , 388, 389, 52 S. Ct. 581 , 76 L. Ed. 1167 . The judicial function is exhausted with the discovery that the relation between means and end is not wholly vain and fanciful, an illusory pretense. Within the field where men of reason may reasonably differ, the Legislature must have its way. Otis v. Parker, supra. Nor in marking out that field will a court be forgetful of presumptions that help to fix the boundaries. ‘As underlying questions of fact may condition the constitutionality of legislation of this character, the presumption of constitutionality must prevail in the absence of some factual foundation of record for overthrowing the statute.’ O’Gorman & Young v. Hartford Fire Insurance Co., 282 U. S. 251 , 257, 51 S. Ct. 130 , 132, 75 L. Ed. 324 [ 72 A. L. R. 1163 ]. * * * “The Genera] Assembly, weighing these and other considerations, has found thorn adequate to justify a temporary exemption from the burdens of taxation. Nothing in the Constitution of Maryland or in the decisions of her courts enables us to saty that there has been a dear abuse of power. We may not nullify for doubt alone. There must be something near to certainty.” (Ita”
4 later decisions 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.