Williams v. State of North Carolina’s Empirical Analysis
317 U.S. 287 · 1942
Citation profile
207 federal appellate · 59 district · 1,085 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,678 later decisions (147 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2024 · most notably Chapman v. State of California (1967), New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964)
207 federal appellate · 59 district · 1,085 state decisions — followed in 48 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 Milliken v. Meyer · Pennoyer v. Neff · Home Building & Loan Ass'n v. Blaisdell · Stromberg v. People of State of California · Stoll v. Gottlieb
Cited together with Williams v. State of North Carolina · Estin v. Estin · John Haddock v. Harriet Haddock · Stromberg v. People of State of California · Sherrer v. Sherrer
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 1,678 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[p]rotection of offspring, property interests, and the enforcement of marital responsibilities.”
17 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he verdict of the jury for all we know may have been rendered on that [unconstitutional] ground alone, since it did not specify the basis on which it rested. . . . No reason has been suggested why the rule of the Stromberg case is inapplicable here. Nor has any reason been advanced why the rule of the Stromberg case is not both appropriate and necessary for the protection of rights of the accused. To say that a general verdict of guilty should be upheld though we cannot know that it did not rest on the invalid constitutional ground on which the case was submitted to the jury, would be to countenance a procedure which would cause a serious impairment of constitutional rights.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Lessin · Gonzalez v. State“"For this Court has been reluctant to admit exceptions in case of judgments rendered by the courts of a sister state, since the `very purpose' of Art. IV, § 1 was `to alter the status of the several states as independent foreign sovereignties, each free to ignore obligations created under the laws or by the judicial proceedings of the others, and to make them integral parts of a single nation.'" ( 317 U.S. at p. 295 , 63 S.Ct. at p. 211 ) See also Fauntleroy v. Lum, 210 U.S. 230 , 28 S.Ct. 641 , 52 L.Ed. 1039 (1908); Kenney v. Loyal Order of Moose, 252 U.S. 411 , 40 S.Ct. 371 , 64 L.Ed. 638 (1920); 28 U.S.C.A. § 1738 .”
5 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.