Grayned v. City of Rockford’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
1,729 federal appellate · 554 district · 2,860 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 7,340 later decisions (152 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Bell v. Wolfish (1979), Buckley v. Valeo (1976)
1,729 federal appellate · 554 district · 2,860 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.
Relationships
Relies on Connally v. General Construction Co. · Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District · Cantwell v. State of Connecticut · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. Y Button
Cited together with Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc. · Grayned v. City of Rockford · Broadrick v. Oklahoma · Kolender v. Lawson · Connally v. General Construction Co.
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 7,340 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is a basic principle of due process that an enactment is void for vagueness if its prohibitions are not clearly defined.”
124 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The crucial question is whether the manner of expression is basically incompatible with the normal activity of a particular place at a particular time.”
31 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[c]ondemned to the use of words, we can never expect mathematical certainty from our language.”
31 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.