Smyth ex rel. Smyth v. Rivero’s Empirical Analysis
282 F.3d 268 · 2002
Citation profile
74 federal appellate · 14 district · 10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 181 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Planned Parenthood Minnesota v. Rounds (2008), Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers International Union v. Department of Energy (2002)
74 federal appellate · 14 district · 10 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 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1988 · 42 U.S.C. § 3601 (§ 801 of the Fair Housing Act (Title VIII, Civil Rights Act of 1968)) · 42 U.S.C. § 601 (§ 401 of the Social Security Act of 1935) · 42 U.S.C. § 602 (§ 402 of the Social Security Act of 1935)
Relies on Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Insurance Co. of America · Pierce v. Underwood · Farrar v. Hobby · Buckhannon Board and Care Home Incs v. West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources · Texas State Teachers Ass'n v. Garland Independent School District
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 181 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We doubt that the Supreme Court's guidance in Buckhannon was intended to be interpreted so restrictively as to require that the words `consent decree' be used explicitly.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[t]he term 'prevailing party,' as used in ... fee-shifting provisions is a 'legal term of art,' and is 'interpreted ... consistently'-that is, without distinctions based on the particular statutory context in which it appears.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[a] court's responsibility to ensure that its orders are fair and lawful stamps an agreement that is made part of an order with judicial imprimatur.”
4 later decisions 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.