Sherbert v. Verner’s Empirical Analysis
1963
Citation profile
1,379 federal appellate · 511 district · 1,279 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5,069 later decisions (253 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth (1972), Schneckloth v. Bustamonte (1973)
1,379 federal appellate · 511 district · 1,279 state decisions — followed in 50 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 1 U.S.C. § 1 (Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002)
Relies on McGowan v. State of Maryland Gallagher · Cantwell v. State of Connecticut · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. Y Button · Prince v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Cited together with Wisconsin v. Yoder · Employment Division Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. L Smith · Thomas v. Review Board of the Indiana Employment Security Division · Cantwell v. State of Connecticut · Lemon v. Kurtzman
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 5,069 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[o]nly the gravest abuses, endangering paramount interests, give occasion for permissible limitation.”
167 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“`the Free Exercise Clause is written in terms of what the government cannot do to the individual, not in terms of what the individual can exact from the government.'”
21 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“reflects nothing more than the governmental obligation of neutrality in the face of religious differences, and does not represent that involvement of religious with secular institutions which it is the object of the Establishment Clause to forestall.”
14 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.