Ortega v. O'Connor’s Empirical Analysis
146 F.3d 1149 · 1998
Citation profile
19 federal appellate · 5 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 36 later decisions — most recently October 2017 · most notably Alexandra White Joseph Deringer Richard Graham v. Russell Lee Lynn Tamiyasu-Lee Lavera Gillespie Paul Smith Robert Zurowski John Phillips Elizabeth Julian (2000), Curley v. Klem (2002)
19 federal appellate · 5 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 Terry v. Ohio · Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Katz v. United States · Anderson v. Creighton · Hoffa v. United States
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 36 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. 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.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“To defeat a claim of qualified immunity, the plaintiff must show that the law was clearly established at the time of the violation of the plaintiffs statutory or constitutional rights, such that a reasonably competent public official should have known he was violating the law governing his conduct. Determining whether a public official is entitled to qualified immunity requires a two-part inquiry: (1) Was the law governing the state official’s conduct clearly established? (2) Under that law could a reasonable state official believe the conduct lawful?”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[Y]ou are asked to determine whether Karen Castro was justified by a reasonable belief that her actions were lawful. This reasonable inquiry is an objective one. The question is whether a reasonable social worker under those same circumstances would believe she had a reasonable basis for removing Plaintiff’s children.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.