Fasulo v. Arafeh’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
9 federal appellate · 4 district · 75 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 92 later decisions — most recently July 2025 · most notably State v. Dukes (1988), Cologne v. Westfarms Associates (1984)
9 federal appellate · 4 district · 75 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 Schneckloth v. Bustamonte · Johnson v. Zerbst · Goldberg v. Kelly · Gault · Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority
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 92 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]o require a patient to initiate judicial review of his confinement . . . ignores the practical considerations.... Briefly, these include the difficulties of overcoming an isolated environment to initiate and coordinate a challenge to one’s confinement. For instance we cannot assume that friends and allies will always be available to secure counsel and marshal evidence on the patient’s behalf.... [T]hough the Statute provides for annual notice to patients of their right to a hearing, the burden of requesting and, therefore, initiating review remains with the patient. The state seeks to justify this procedure by arguing that allowing the patient to choose whether to have a hear ing will avoid unnecessary judicial proceedings. We doubt whether this rationale is adequate since it ignores the practical difficulties of requiring a mental patient to overcome the effects of his confinement, his closed environment, his possible incompetence and the debilitating effects of drugs or other treatment on his ability to make a decision which may amount to the waiver of his constitutional right to a review of his status.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage“`Commitment must be justified on the basis of a legitimate state interest, and the reasons for committing a particular individual must be established in an appropriate proceeding.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“The state's power to confine terminates when the patient's condition no longer meets the legal standard for commitment. Since the state's power to confine is measured by a legal standard, the expiration of the state's power can only be determined in a judicial proceeding which tests the patient's present mental status against the legal standard for confinement. That adjudication cannot be made by medical personnel unguided by the procedural safeguards which cushion the individual from an overzealous exercise of state power when the individual is first threatened with the deprivation of his liberty.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.