Smith v. Mattox’s Empirical Analysis
127 F.3d 1416 · 1997
Citation profile
47 federal appellate · 5 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 140 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2025 · most notably Hope v. Pelzer (2002), Lee v. Ferraro (2002)
47 federal appellate · 5 district · 2 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.
Relationships
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Anderson v. Creighton · Graham v. Connor · Behrens v. Pelletier · United States v. Lanier
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 140 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“that the official's conduct lies so obviously at the very core of what the Fourth Amendment prohibits that the unlawfulness of the conduct was readily apparent to the official, notwithstanding the lack of caselaw,”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“`the hazy border between excessive and acceptable force,'”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Hope v. Pelzer · Sebastian v. Ortiz“readily apparent even without clarifying caselaw”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.