Sylvia H. Thompson v. Clark M. Clifford, as Secretary of Defense’s Empirical Analysis
408 F.2d 154 · 1968
Citation profile
71 federal appellate · 4 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 126 later decisions — most recently July 2024 · most notably Scientists' Institute for Public Information, Inc. v. Atomic Energy Commission (1973), The Wilderness Society v. Rogers C. B. Morton, Secretary of the Interior (1973)
71 federal appellate · 4 district · 7 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.
Relationships
Relies on Skidmore v. Swift & Co. · Securities and Exchange Commission v. Chenery Corporation · Burlington Truck Lines, Inc. v. United States · Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez · Trop v. Dulles
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 126 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“May' ordinarily connotes discretion, but neither in lay nor legal understanding is the result inexorable. Rather, the conclusion to be reached 'depends on the context of the statute, and on whether it is fairly to be presumed that it was the intention of the legislature to confer a discretionary power or to impose an imperative duty.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'Administrative determinations must have a basis in law' and their force depends heavily on the validity of the reasoning in the logical bridge between statute and regulation.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(a)dministrative construction is less potent than it otherwise would be where it does not rest upon matters peculiarly within the administrator's field of expertise.”
4 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.