Williams v. Williams’s Empirical Analysis
1879
Citation profile
23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently January 1989
23 state decisions — followed in 13 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.
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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The law of this state declares that marriage is a civil contract (sec. 2328, R. S. 1878) ; and there is no statute law which points out in what manner the contract must be entered into to render it valid. It need not be in writing or in the presence of witnesses, but there must be an agreement between the parties that they will hold toward each other the relation of husband and wife, with all the responsibilities and duties which the law attaches to such relation, otherwise there can be no lawful marriage.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Becker v. Becker“As a general rule, when a marriage is sought to be proved by conduct, cohabitation and repute, the date of the marriage in fact, which such conduct and repute tends to establish, is the date of the commencement of such conduct and repute, and not afterwards.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Welch v. All Persons
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.