37 Md. App. 322 - Coleman v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
2 district · 12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently October 2010
2 district · 12 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
Relies on Craig v. Boren · Harden v. Mass Transit Administration · Rand v. Rand · Henderson v. Henderson · 14 Md. App. 497 - Hughes v. State
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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Section 88(a) was enacted into law by Chapter 73 of the Laws of Maryland of 1896. It accurately reflected the Zeitgeist of the 19th Century. A woman, deserted by her husband, would be a ward of the State, a charge or burden on the community at large. The criminal sanction was enacted to allocate the burden of support to the “lawful breadwinner” and not to the neighbors and fellow villagers. A man, on the other hand, deserted by his wife was not contemplated as one who would become a financial burden upon the community. The predicate for the law, however, rested upon a broader base than the mere fear that the wife, unsupported by her husband, would become a public charge. The duty of the husband to support the wife, above and beyond the question of her financial need, was warp and woof of the prevailing ethos of the times.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Measured against the clear command of the Equal Rights Amendment, there is no question that § 88 (a) cannot pass muster. To establish that it is a crime for the husband to desert his wife but no crime for a wife to desert her husband and to establish that it is a crime for a husband to fail to support his wife but no crime for his wife to fail to support her husband is to establish a distinction solely on the basis of sex. [ 37 Md. App. at 327-28 , 377 A.2d at 556 .]”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Any person who shall without just cause desert or wilfully neglect to provide for the support and maintenance of his wife shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction in any court of the State having criminal jurisdiction shall be punished by a fine not exceeding one hundred dollars, or imprisonment in the Maryland House of Correction, or in jail, for not more than three years, or both, in the discretion of the court.”
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.