White v. Holmes’s Empirical Analysis
21 F.3d 277 · 1994
Citation profile
33 federal appellate · 1 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 50 later decisions — most recently April 2025 · most notably Liebe v. Norton (1998), Moody v. St. Charles County (1994)
33 federal appellate · 1 district · 1 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
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 4042 (Prison Camera Reform Act of 2021) · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Hudson v. McMillian · Administrators of the Tulane Educational Fund v. Presti · Kansas v. Colorado · Cole v. Bone
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 50 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment necessarily excludes from constitutional recognition de minimis uses of force, provided that the use of force is not of a sort repugnant to the conscience of mankind.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“When prison officials maliciously and sadistically use force to cause harm, contemporary standards of decency always are violated.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. McLaurin v. Prater“[a] supervisor is not vicariously liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for an employee's unconstitutional activity.”
1 later decision 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.