Everson v. Board of Education’s Empirical Analysis
330 U.S. 1 · 1947
Citation profile
823 federal appellate · 295 district · 754 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,058 later decisions (214 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Franks v. Delaware (1978), Buckley v. Valeo (1976)
823 federal appellate · 295 district · 754 state decisions — followed in 48 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 Cantwell v. State of Connecticut · Pierce v. Society of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary Same · West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette · Prince v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts · United States v. Carolene Products Co.
Cited together with Lemon v. Kurtzman · School District of Abington Township Pennsylvania v. Schempp J Murray III · Walz v. Tax Comm'n of City of New York · Zorach v. Clauson · Lynch v. Donnelly
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 3,058 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[no] tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.”
213 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
80 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
22 later decisions 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.