134 S. Ct. 2012 - Plumhoff v. Rickard’s Empirical Analysis
2014
Citation profile
183 federal appellate · 41 district · 16 state decisions
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1291 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Ashcroft v. Iqbal · Graham v. Connor · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Pearson v. Callahan · Rakas v. Illinois
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 457 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a defendant cannot be said to have violated a clearly established right unless the right's contours were sufficiently definite that any reasonable official in the defendant's shoes would have understood that he was violating it.”
39 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“repeatedly stressed that courts must not 'define clearly established law at a high level of generality, since doing so avoids the crucial question whether the official acted reasonably in the particular circumstances that he or she faced.'”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[must] allow[ ] for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments ... about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.”
9 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.