Cope v. Heltsley’s Empirical Analysis
128 F.3d 452 · 1997
Citation profile
14 federal appellate · 1 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 52 later decisions — most recently November 2018 · most notably Houston v. Clark County Sheriff Deputy John Does 1-5 (1999), Perez v. Oakland County (2006)
14 federal appellate · 1 district ·
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 · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Elrod v. Burns · Siegert v. Gilley
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 52 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“examine the asserted right at a relatively high level of specificity. The right must have been “clearly established” not just in an abstract sense, but in a “particularized” sense. Claims of immunity are thus to be analyzed “on a fact-specific, case-by-case basis to determine whether a reasonable official in the defendant's] position could have believed that his conduct was lawful.... ””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The right must be defined at the appropriate level of specificity to determine whether it was clearly established at the time the defendants acted. This means that to be “clearly established” the contours of the right must be sufficiently clear so that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. A right is clearly established if there is binding precedent from the Supreme Court, the Sixth Circuit, the district court itself, or other circuits that is directly on point. “ ‘This is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful, but it is to say that in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent.’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Wilkins v. Jakeway“Although decisions of other courts can clearly establish the law, such decisions must both point unmistakenly to the unconstitutionality of the conduct and be so clearly foreshadowed by applicable direct authority as to leave no doubt in the mind of a reasonable officer that his conduct was unconstitutional.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Johnson
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.