Simmons v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1968
Citation profile
3,983 federal appellate · 423 district · 6,983 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13,278 later decisions (115 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2026 · most notably Neil v. Biggers (1972), Rakas v. Illinois (1979)
3,983 federal appellate · 423 district · 6,983 state decisions — followed in 50 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on United States v. Wade · Mapp v. Ohio · Stovall v. Denno · Jones v. United States
Cited together with Stovall v. Denno · United States v. Wade · Neil v. Biggers · Manson v. Brathwaite · Gilbert v. California
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 13,278 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“so impermissibly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.”
572 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“intolerable that one constitutional right should have to be surrendered in order to assert another.”
88 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“so unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to irreparable mistaken identification”
38 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.