Swann v. Adams’s Empirical Analysis
1967
Citation profile
82 federal appellate · 90 district · 118 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 531 later decisions (62 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2024 · most notably Williams v. Illinois (1970), White v. Regester (1973)
82 federal appellate · 90 district · 118 state decisions — followed in 24 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 Reynolds v. Sims · Flemming v. Nestor · Davis v. Department of Labor & Industries · Lucas v. Forty-Fourth General Assembly of Colorado · Roman v. Sincock
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 531 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“De minimis deviations are unavoidable, but variations of 30% among senate districts and 40% among house districts can hardly be deemed de minimis and none of our cases suggests that differences of this magnitude will be approved without a satisfactory explanation grounded on acceptable state policy”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"So long as the divergences from a strict population standard are based on legitimate considerations incident to the effectuation of a rational state policy, some deviations from the equal-population principle are constitutionally permissible with respect to the apportionment of seats in either or both of the two houses of a bicameral state legislature. But neither history alone, nor economic or other sorts of group interests, are permissible factors in attempting to justify disparities from population-based representation. Citizens, not history or economic interests, cast votes ..."”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the State could have come much closer to providing districts of equal population than it did.”
3 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.