Harmon v. Brucker’s Empirical Analysis
1958
Citation profile
324 federal appellate · 123 district · 27 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 796 later decisions (46 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner (1967), Trop v. Dulles (1958)
324 federal appellate · 123 district · 27 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedHarmon v. Brucker (from District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 10 U.S.C. § 1552 · 10 U.S.C. § 3811 · 5 U.S.C. § 1001
Relies on Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath · Orloff v. Willoughby · Philadelphia Co. v. Stimson · Stark v. Wickard
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 796 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“judicial relief from this illegality would be available”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“duty [of courts] to avoid deciding constitutional questions presented unless essential to proper disposition of a case.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the type of discharge to be issued is to be determined solely by the soldier's military record in the Army,”
3 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.