Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson’s Empirical Analysis
1971
Citation profile
1,850 federal appellate · 395 district · 1,485 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5,588 later decisions (117 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2025 · most notably Edelman v. Jordan (1974), Landgraf v. USI Film Products (1994)
1,850 federal appellate · 395 district · 1,485 state decisions — followed in 49 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
reviewedHuson v. Chevron Oil Co. (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 43 U.S.C. § 1331 (Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006) · 43 U.S.C. § 1333
Relies on Erie Co v. Tompkins · Griffin v. People of the State of Illinois · Hanna v. Plumer · Linkletter v. Walker
Cited together with Linkletter v. Walker · Wilson v. Garcia · DelCostello v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters · Cipriano v. City of Houma · Saint Francis College v. Al-Khazraji
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 5,588 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“we must ... weigh the merits and demerits in each case by looking to the prior history of the rule in question, its purpose and effect, and whether retrospective operation will further or retard its operation.”
488 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[I]t would yield 'substantial inequitable results' to hold that [appellants] 'slept on [their] rights' at a time when [they] could not have known the time limitation that the law imposed upon [them].”
17 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“We should not indulge in the fiction that the law now announced has always been the law and, therefore, that those who did not avail themselves of it waived their rights.”
17 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.