Stack v. Boyle’s Empirical Analysis
1952
Citation profile
1,207 federal appellate · 94 district · 532 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,376 later decisions (72 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2026 · most notably Mitchell v. Forsyth (1985), Bell v. Wolfish (1979)
1,207 federal appellate · 94 district · 532 state decisions — followed in 44 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 3041 · 18 U.S.C. § 3141 (Bail Reform Act of 1984) · 18 U.S.C. § 371 · 28 U.S.C. § 1291 · 28 U.S.C. § 1292 · 28 U.S.C. § 2241 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp. · Cobbledick v. United States · Dennis v. United States · Royall
Cited together with Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp. · Abney v. United States · United States v. MacDonald · Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay · Helstoski v. Meanor
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 2,376 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[l]ike the ancient practice of securing the oaths of responsible persons to stand as sureties for the accused, the modern practice of requiring a bail bond or the deposit of a sum of money subject to forfeiture serves as additional assurance of the presence of an accused. Bail set at a figure higher than an amount reasonably calculated to fulfill this purpose is “excessive” under the Eighth Amendment.”
79 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““[T]he spirit of the [bail] procedure is to enable [defendants] to stay out of jail until a trial has found them guilty. Without this conditional privilege, even those wrongly accused are punished by a period of imprisonment while awaiting trial and are handicapped in consulting counsel, searching for evidence and witnesses, and preparing a defense.””
13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'unless [the order] can be reviewed before [the proceedings terminate], it never can be reviewed at all.'”
11 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.