Younger v. Harris’s Empirical Analysis
1971
Citation profile
5,084 federal appellate · 2,323 district · 430 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 16,851 later decisions (434 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Coleman v. Thompson (1991), Colorado River Water Conservation District v. United States (1976)
5,084 federal appellate · 2,323 district · 430 state decisions — followed in 41 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 Ex Parte: Edward T Young · Monroe v. Pape · Cantwell v. State of Connecticut · William Marbury v. James Madison
Cited together with Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd. · Railroad Commission v. Pullman Co. · Middlesex County Ethics Committee v. Garden State Bar Ass'n · Samuels v. J Mackell Fernandez · Colorado River Water Conservation District 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 16,851 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a proper respect for state functions, a recognition of the fact that the entire country is made up of a Union of separate state governments, and a continuance of the belief that the National Government will fare best if the States and their institutions are left free to perform their separate functions in their separate ways.”
488 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“flagrantly and patently violative of express constitutional prohibitions in every clause, sentence and paragraph, and in whatever manner and against whomever an effort might be made to apply it.”
107 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“persons having no fears of state prosecution except those that are imaginary or speculative, are not to be accepted as appropriate plaintiffs.”
48 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.