State v. Berger’s Empirical Analysis
2006
Citation profile
73 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 81 later decisions — most recently May 2025 · most notably State v. Hairston (2008), State of Arizona v. Mark Noriki Kasic (2011)
73 state decisions — followed in 12 states
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 Rochin v. People of California · Solem v. Helm · Harmelin v. Michigan · Atkins v. Virginia · New York v. Ferber
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 81 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[I]f the sentence for a single offense is not disproportionately long, it does not become so merely because it is consecutive to another sentence for a separate offense or because the consecutive sentences are lengthy in aggregate.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Ira v. Janecka · Kinkel v. Persson“Eighth [A]mendment analysis focuses on the sentence imposed for each specific crime, not on the cumulative sentence.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Ira v. Janecka · State v. Helm“[a] prison sentence is not grossly disproportionate, and a court need not proceed beyond the threshold inquiry, if it arguably furthers the State's penological goals and thus reflects `a rational legislative judgment, entitled to deference.'”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Humphrey v. Wilson
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.