Beckley Newspapers Corp. v. Hanks’s Empirical Analysis
1967
Citation profile
98 federal appellate · 12 district · 247 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 471 later decisions (25 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2025 · most notably Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974), Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc. (1971)
98 federal appellate · 12 district · 247 state decisions — followed in 39 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 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts · Garrison v. State of Louisiana · Rosenblatt v. Baer · Time, Inc. v. Hill
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 471 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We must `make an independent examination of the whole record,' ... so as to assure ourselves that the judgment does not constitute a forbidden intrusion on the field of free expression.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“high degree of awareness of . . . probable falsity.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““. . .a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with “actual malice” —that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not” New York Times v. Sullivan, supra; See also Curtis Publishing v. Butts, 388 U.S. 130 , 87 S.Ct. 1975 , 18 L.Ed.2d 1094 (1967); Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 , 94 S.Ct. 2997 , 41 L.Ed.2d 789 .”
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.