Stanley v. Illinois’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
820 federal appellate · 398 district · 6,216 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 9,011 later decisions (166 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Illinois v. Gates (1983), Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth (1972)
820 federal appellate · 398 district · 6,216 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.
Relationships
Relies on Chimel v. California · Goldberg v. Kelly · Griswold v. State of Connecticut · Picard v. Connor
Cited together with Santosky v. Kramer · Meyer v. State of Nebraska · Prince v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts · Moore v. City of East Cleveland · Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur
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 9,011 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“undeniably warrants deference and, absent a powerful countervailing interest, protection.”
321 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Procedure by presumption is always cheaper and easier than individualized determination. But when, as here, the procedure forecloses the determinative issues of competence and care, when it explicitly disdains present realities in deference to past formalities, it needlessly risks running roughshod over the important interests of both parent and child. It therefore cannot stand.”
87 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“form of liberty guaranteed by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,”
15 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.