Wieman v. Updegraff’s Empirical Analysis
1952
Citation profile
670 federal appellate · 208 district · 339 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,908 later decisions (190 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2023 · most notably Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth (1972), Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois (1968)
670 federal appellate · 208 district · 339 state decisions — followed in 34 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 United Public Workers of America v. Mitchell · American Communications Ass'n v. Douds · Hebert v. State of Louisiana · Adler v. Board of Education of City of New York
Cited together with V The Board of Higher Education of the City of New York · Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth · Keyishian v. Board of Regents of Univ. of State of NY · Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois · Perry v. Sindermann
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 1,908 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Indiscriminate classification of innocent with knowing activity must fall as an assertion of arbitrary power. The oath offends due process. . . We need not pause to consider whether an abstract right to public employment exists. It is sufficient to say that constitutional protection does extend to the public servant whose exclusion pursuant to a statute is patently arbitrary or discriminatory.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“There can be no dispute about the consequences visited upon a person excluded from public employment on disloyalty grounds. In the view of the community, the stain is a deep one; indeed, it has become a badge of infamy. Especially is this so in time of cold war and hot emotions when `each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy.'”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“* * * [T]he facile generalization that there is no constitutionally protected right to public employment is to obscure the issue. For, in United Public Workers, though we held that the Federal Government through the Hatch Act [18 U.S.C.A. §§ 118j, 118 l ] could properly bar its employees from certain political activity thought inimical to the interests of the Civil Service, we cast this holding into perspective by emphasizing that Congress could not `enact a regulation providing that no Republican, Jew or Negro shall be appointed to federal office, or that no federal employee shall attend Mass or take any active part in missionary work.' 330 U.S. at [page] 100 [67 S.Ct. at page 569, 91 L.Ed. 754]. See also In re Summers, 1945, 325 U.S. 561 , 571 [65 S.Ct. 1307, 89 L.Ed. 1795]. We need not pause to consider whether an abstract right to public employment exists. It is sufficient to say that constitutional protection does extend to the public servant whose exclusion * * * is patently arbitrary or discriminatory.”
7 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.