Zobel v. Williams’s Empirical Analysis
1982
Citation profile
262 federal appellate · 87 district · 263 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 898 later decisions (51 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2025 · most notably City of Cleburne Texas v. Cleburne Living Center (1985), Plyler v. Doe (1982)
262 federal appellate · 87 district · 263 state decisions — followed in 32 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 Edelman v. Jordan · Buckley v. Valeo · Dandridge v. Williams · Shapiro v. Thompson · Sosna v. Iowa
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 898 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Generally, a law will survive that scrutiny if the distinction it makes rationally furthers a legitimate state purpose.”
19 later decisions quote this exact passage“the erection of actual barriers to interstate movement”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“The statute does not involve the kind of discrimination which the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Art. IV was designed to prevent. That Clause 'was designed to insure to a citizen of State A who ventures into State B the same privileges which the citizens of State B enjoy.' Toomer v. Witsell, 334 U.S. 385 , 395 [68 S.Ct. 1156, 1162, 92 L.Ed. 1460] (1948). The Clause is thus not applicable to this case.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.