Smith v. Yeager’s Empirical Analysis
1968
Citation profile
62 federal appellate · 7 district · 17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 154 later decisions (13 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2017 · most notably McMann v. Richardson (1970), Lindh v. Murphy (1997)
62 federal appellate · 7 district · 17 state decisions
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
reviewedUnited States of America Ex Rel. Edgar H. Smith v. Howard Yeager, Warden, New Jersey State Prison at Trenton (from Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Johnson v. Zerbst · Townsend v. Sain · Fay v. Noia · Brown v. Allen · Sanders v. United States
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 154 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Whatever counsel’s reasons for this obscure gesture of noblesse oblige [in waiving the defendant’s right to a hearing], we cannot ... presume that he intentionally relinquished a known right or privilege, when the right or privilege was of doubtful existence at the time of the supposed waiver.”
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.