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← 386 U.S. 547 - Pierson v. Ray

Pierson v. Ray’s Empirical Analysis

1967

Citation profile

7,686
cited by 7,686 later decisions
192
cited 192 times by the Supreme Court
48
states following
June 2026
most recently cited

2,576 federal appellate · 992 district · 872 state decisions

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7,686 later decisions (192 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982), Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co. (1970)

2,576 federal appellate · 992 district · 872 state decisions — followed in 48 states

2.6k01967197019801990200020102020decided

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.

Appellate journey

reviewedRobert L. Pierson v. J. L. Ray (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)

Relationships

Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))

Relies on Baker v. Carr · Monroe v. Pape · Tenney v. Brandhove · City of Greenwood v. Peacock

Cited together with Monroe v. Pape · Scheuer v. Rhodes · Imbler v. Pachtman · Tenney v. Brandhove · Wood v. Strickland

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 7,686 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

  1. “with independence and without fear of consequences.”
    236 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
    e.g. Stone v. Powell · Butz v. Economou
  2. “Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.”
    52 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
    e.g. Butz v. Economou · Owen v. City of Independence
  3. “charged with predicting the future course of constitutional law,”
    23 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
    e.g. Gay Activists Alliance v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma · Lock v. Jenkins

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.