Evans v. Abney’s Empirical Analysis
1970
Citation profile
75 federal appellate · 18 district · 68 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 231 later decisions (13 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2018 · most notably Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co. (1970), Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co. (1974)
75 federal appellate · 18 district · 68 state decisions — followed in 17 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 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. · Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority · Shelley v. Kraemer · Gomillion v. Lightfoot
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 231 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“is to construe and enforce the Constitution and the laws of the land as they are”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“In 1911, only six years after the enactment of §§ 69-504 and 69-505, Senator Bacon, a lawyer, wrote his will. When he wrote the provision creating Baconsfield as a public park open only to the white race, he was not merely expressing his own testamentary intent, but was taking advantage of the special power Georgia had conferred by §§ 69-504 and 69-505 on testators seeking to establish racially segregated public parks. As Mr. Justice White concluded in Evans v. Newton, “ ‘the State through its regulations has become involved to such a significant extent’ in bringing about the discriminatory provision in Senator Bacon’s trust that the racial restriction ‘must be held to reflect state policy and therefore to violate the Fourteenth Amendment.’ ” [Evans v. Newton] 382 U.S. [296] at 311, [86 S.Ct. (486), at 495, 15 L.Ed.2d (373) at 384]. This state-encouraged testamentary provision is the sole basis for the Georgia courts’ holding that Baconsfield must revert to Senator Bacon’s heirs. The Court’s finding that it is not the State of Georgia but “a private party which is injecting the racially discriminatory motivation” inexcusably disregards the State’s role in enacting the statute without which Senator Bacon could not have written the discriminatory provisions. This, then, is not a case of private discrimination. It is rather discrimination in which the State of Georgia is “significantly involved,” and enforcement of the reverter is therefore unconstitutional. * * * 396 U.S. at 45”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Parks v. Mr. Ford“* * * In the case at bar there is not the slightest indication that any of the Georgia judges involved were motivated by racial animus or discriminatory intent of any sort in construing and enforcing Senator Bacon’s will. Nor is there any indication that Senator Bacon in drawing up his will was persuaded or induced to include racial restrictions by the fact that such restrictions were permitted by the Georgia trust statutes. * * * On the contrary, the language of the Senator’s will shows that the racial restrictions were solely the product of the testator’s own full-blown social philosophy. * * *”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Parks v. Mr. Ford
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.