Clark v. Lockhart’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 federal appellate · 1 district · 1 state decisions

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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In McQueen, supra, the Court of Appeals indicated dissatisfaction with the rule that the effectiveness and adequacy of the assistance afforded to his client by an attorney is to be measured by the “mockery of justice” test laid down in earlier cases and strongly indicated preference for the rule that has been adopted in other Circuits that the quality of the representation afforded is to be measured by a reasonable or normal competency yardstick. While the Court of Appeals did not find it necessary in the particular case before it to reject categorically the earlier rule, this Court thinks it fairly predictable that in the future the adequacy and effectiveness of representation will be measured by reference to the questions of whether the attorney was reasonably competent and whether his representation of his client in the particular case was reasonably competent. And this Court will measure the representation afforded petitioner by Mr. Wilkinson by those standards. [ 379 F.Supp. at 1329 ]”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 417 F. Supp. 697 - Garton v. Swenson