Aucoin v. Haney’s Empirical Analysis
306 F.3d 268 · 2002
Citation profile
19 federal appellate · 2 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 38 later decisions — most recently February 2021 · most notably Kinney v. Weaver (2004), Freeman v. Gore (2007)
19 federal appellate · 2 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 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois · Connick v. Myers · Elrod v. Burns · Siegert v. Gilley · Johnson v. Jones
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 38 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“neither the Fifth Circuit nor the Supreme Court had addressed the issue of political patronage in the hiring or firing of investigators in district attorneys' offices, and neither had addressed an issue sufficiently analogous that a reasonable official would understand from its resolution that it is a First Amendment violation to dismiss or not hire an investigator on the grounds that the investigator supported the campaign of the official's opponent.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[i]n Branti, the [Supreme] Court explained that 'the ultimate inquiry is not whether the label 'policymaker' or 'confidential' fits a particular position; rather, the question is whether the hiring authority can demonstrate that party affiliation is an appropriate requirement for effective performance of the public office involved.'”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[a]n employee is confidential if he or she stands in a confidential relationship to the policymaking process, e.g., as an advisor to a policymaker, or if he or she has access to confidential documents or other materials that embody policymaking deliberations and determinations, e.g., as a private secretary to a policymaker.”
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.