Epperson v. Arkansas’s Empirical Analysis
1968
Citation profile
836 federal appellate · 299 district · 293 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,406 later decisions (120 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Roe v. Wade (1973), Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization (1976)
836 federal appellate · 299 district · 293 state decisions — followed in 40 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 United States v. O'Brien · Connally v. General Construction Co. · Meyer v. State of Nebraska · Keyishian v. Board of Regents of Univ. of State of NY · Shelton v. Tucker
Cited together with Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District · Lemon v. Kurtzman · School District of Abington Township Pennsylvania v. Schempp J Murray III · Everson v. Board of Education · West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette
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 2,406 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“By and large, public education in our Nation is committed to the control of state and local authorities. Courts do not and cannot intervene in the resolution of conflicts which arise in the daily operation of school systems and which do not directly and sharply implicate basic constitutional values.”
174 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Arkansas' law cannot be defended as an act of religious neutrality. Arkansas did not seek to excise from the curricula of its schools and universities all discussion of the origin of man. The law's effort was confined to an attempt to blot out a particular theory because of its supposed conflict with the Biblical account, literally read. Plainly, the law is contrary to the mandate of the First, and in violation of the Fourteenth, Amendment to the Constitution.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 536 , 554, 85 S.Ct. 453, 464, 13 L.Ed.2d 471; Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 559 , 574, 85 S.Ct. 476, 485-486, 13 L.Ed.2d 487. I question whether it is absolutely certain, as the Court's opinion indicates, that”
3 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.