Reynolds v. Sims’s Empirical Analysis
1964
Citation profile
1,220 federal appellate · 706 district · 1,801 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 6,659 later decisions (445 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2026 · most notably Chapman v. State of California (1967), Bell v. Wolfish (1979)
1,220 federal appellate · 706 district · 1,801 state decisions — followed in 49 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 28 U.S.C. § 1343 · 28 U.S.C. § 2281 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Baker v. Carr · Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. · Griffin v. People of the State of Illinois · Douglas v. People of State of California
Cited together with Baker v. Carr · Avery v. Midland County · Wesberry v. Sanders · Whitcomb v. Chavis · White v. Regester
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 6,659 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The right to vote freely for the candidate of one's choice is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government.”
255 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the Equal Protection Clause requires that the seats in both houses of a bicameral state legislature must be apportioned on a population basis”
150 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“When there is an unavoidable conflict between the Federal and a State Constitution, the Supremacy Clause of course controls.”
98 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.