Trulock v. Freeh’s Empirical Analysis
275 F.3d 391 · 2001
Citation profile
53 federal appellate · 7 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 150 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2024 · most notably Francis v. Giacomelli (2009), Nemet Chevrolet, Ltd. v. Consumeraffairs.com, Inc. (2009)
53 federal appellate · 7 district · 7 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 Terry v. Ohio · Conley v. Gibson · Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics · Anderson v. Creighton
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 150 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Qualified immunity shields government officials from civil liability' insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.'”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“qualified immunity was never intended to relieve government officials from the responsibility of applying familiar legal principles to new situations.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[t]he court should focus upon “the right [not] at its most general or abstract level, but at the level of its application to the specific conduct being challenged.” Wiley v. Doory, 14 F.3d 993, 995 (4th Cir.1994) (internal quotations omitted) (quoting Pritchett v. Alford, 973 F.2d 307, 312 (4th Cir.1992)); see also Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 639-41 , 107 S.Ct. 3034 , 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987) (“The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right”). This does not mean, however, that an official will be protected by qualified immunity unless the very act in question has previously been held unlawful. Anderson, 483 U.S. at 640 , 107 S.Ct. 3034 , 97 L.Ed.2d 523 . Rather, the unlawfulness must be apparent in light of pre-existing law. Id.”
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.