Ward v. Ward’s Empirical Analysis
1873
Citation profile
7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently August 2017
7 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.
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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““We hesitate, to consider well any judgment of ours which declares unconstitutional or void an act of the legislature, paying due deference to the learning and wisdom of that branch of the government. But when we find ourselves totally unable to administer a law by reason of its uncertainty or ambiguity, or believe it to be unconstitutional, we shall not hesitate to discharge the duty which the law devolves upon us. . . . We do not mean to say, by any means, that the act of November 1, 1871, is unconstitutional, but we do say that it is nugatory and void for want of some adequate provision in the law to carry out its execution. And, for the reasons given, the appeal in 1287 must also be dismissed.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. In re Hendricks
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.