Williams v. Kaiser’s Empirical Analysis
323 U.S. 471 · 1945
Citation profile
249 federal appellate · 29 district · 259 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 760 later decisions (92 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2024 · most notably Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), Brady v. United States (1970)
249 federal appellate · 29 district · 259 state decisions — followed in 29 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 Glasser v. United States · Johnson v. Zerbst · Powell v. State of Alabama Patterson · Whitney v. People of State of California · Grosjean v. American Press Co.
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 760 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“* * * `Even the intelligent and educated layman has small and sometimes no skill in the science of law. If charged with crime, he is incapable, generally, of determining for himself whether the indictment is good or bad. * * * Left without the aid of counsel he may be put on trial without a proper charge, and convicted upon incompetent evidence, or evidence irrelevant to the issue or otherwise inadmissible. He lacks both the skill and knowledge adequately to prepare his defense, even though he have a perfect one.' * * * The decision to plead guilty is a decision to allow a judgment of conviction to be entered without a hearing — a decision which is irrevocable and which forecloses any possibility of establishing innocence. * * * He needs the aid of counsel lest he be the victim of overzealous prosecutors, of the law's complexity, or of his own ignorance or bewilderment.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“without giving petitioner an opportunity to prove his allegations,”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““* * * it is the duty of the court, whether requested or not, to assign counsel for him as a necessary requisite of due process of law; and that duty is not discharged by an assignment at such a time or under such circumstances as to preclude the giving of effective aid in the preparation and trial of the case. To hold otherwise'would be to ignore the fundamental postulate, already adverted to, ‘that there are certain immutable principles of justice which inhere in the very idea of free government which no member of the Union may disregard.’ ””
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.