Dombrowski v. Pfister’s Empirical Analysis
1965
Citation profile
1,454 federal appellate · 566 district · 607 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4,950 later decisions (251 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Younger v. Harris (1971), Roe v. Wade (1973)
1,454 federal appellate · 566 district · 607 state decisions — followed in 46 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
Relies on Ex Parte: Edward T Young · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. Y Button · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. State of Alabama Patterson · Thornhill v. Alabama
Cited together with Younger v. Harris · Zwickler v. Koota · Broadrick v. Oklahoma · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. Y Button · Samuels v. J Mackell Fernandez
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 4,950 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“attacks on overly broad statutes with no requirement that the person making the attack demonstrate that his own conduct could not be regulated by a statute drawn with the requisite narrow specificity.”
85 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“A court of the United States may not grant an injunction to stay proceedings in a State court except as expressly authorized by Act of Congress, or where necessary in aid of its jurisdiction, or to protect or effectuate its judgments.”
65 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Engelman v. Cahn · Krahm v. Graham“are entitled to be free of the burdens of defending prosecutions, however expeditious, aimed at hammering out the structure of the statute piecemeal.”
53 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.