Holt v. Sarver’s Empirical Analysis
1970
Citation profile
99 federal appellate · 25 district · 21 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 234 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2018 · most notably Wolff v. McDonnell (1974), Rhodes v. Chapman (1981)
99 federal appellate · 25 district · 21 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
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 242 · 28 U.S.C. § 1343 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Monroe v. Pape · Robinson v. State of California · Cooper v. Pate · Jackson v. Bishop · John Alfred Lee v. Ralph H. Tahash, Warden
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 234 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Let there be no mistake in the matter; the obligation of the Respondents to eliminate existing unconstitutionalities does not depend upon what the Legislature may do, or upon what the Governor may do, or, indeed, upon what Respondents may actually be able to accomplish. If Arkansas is going to operate a Penitentiary System, it is going to have to be a system that is countenanced by the Constitution of the United States.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage““The absence of an affirmative program of training and rehabilitation may have constitutional significance where in the absence of such a program conditions and practices exist which actually militate against reform”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage“[CJonfinement itself within a given institution may amount to a cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Constitution where the confinement is characterized by conditions and practices so bad as to be shocking to the conscience of reasonably civilized people even though a particular inmate may never personally be subject to any disciplinary action.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.