Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections Butts’s Empirical Analysis
1966
Citation profile
586 federal appellate · 231 district · 672 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,596 later decisions (185 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2025 · most notably Buckley v. Valeo (1976), Dandridge v. Williams (1970)
586 federal appellate · 231 district · 672 state decisions — followed in 44 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 42 U.S.C. § 1971 (Civil Rights Act of 1957)
Relies on Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. · Griffin v. People of the State of Illinois · Griswold v. State of Connecticut · Reynolds v. Sims · Malloy v. Hogan
Cited together with Reynolds v. Sims · Shapiro v. Thompson · Kramer v. Union Free School District No. 15 · Dunn v. Blumstein · Carrington v. Rash
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 2,596 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“make[ ] the affluence of the voter or payment of any fee an electoral standard.”
44 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Buckley v. Valeo · Plyler v. Doe“once the franchise is granted to the electorate, lines may not be drawn which are inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
20 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“We have long been mindful that where fundamental rights and liberties are asserted under the Equal Protection Clause, classifications which might invade or restrain them must be closely scrutinized and carefully confined.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.