Lee v. Washington’s Empirical Analysis
1968
Citation profile
252 federal appellate · 53 district · 64 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 760 later decisions (58 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably Wolff v. McDonnell (1974), Bell v. Wolfish (1979)
252 federal appellate · 53 district · 64 state decisions — followed in 18 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.
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 760 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[P]rison authorities have the right, acting in good faith and in particularized circumstances, to take into account racial tensions in maintaining security, discipline, and good order in prisons and jails.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“`the necessities of prison security and discipline.'”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Hudson v. Palmer · Jones v. Diamond“unwilling to assume that state or local prison authorities might mistakenly regard such an explicit pronouncement as evincing any dilution of this Court's firm commitment to the Fourteenth Amendment's prohibition of racial discrimination.”
1 later decision 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.