State v. Witham’s Empirical Analysis
1888
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently October 1974
12 state decisions — followed in 10 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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Ability and refusal to support constitute one act of delinquency; and where a man has a physical and mental power to acquire means he comes within the intent of the law. It would be an unreasonable construction to confine it to a case where the husband had actually acquired property; for, as we have said, his ability tO' support his wife — to discharge that most sacred of all social duties — might be as ample and complete where he had capacity to earn wages or a salary, or skill to acquire wealth, as when he possessed money itself.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Zitlow v. State
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.