Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
7,736 federal appellate · 4,069 district · 5,347 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 28,461 later decisions (263 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Mathews v. Eldridge (1976), Wolff v. McDonnell (1974)
7,736 federal appellate · 4,069 district · 5,347 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedDavid E. Roth, for Himself and for All Others Similarly Situated v. The Board of Regents of State Colleges and Roger E. Guiles (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 29 U.S.C. § 151 (§ 1 of the National Labor Relations Act) · 29 U.S.C. § 158 (§ 8 of the National Labor Relations Act) · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 2000E (§ 701 of the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964)
Relies on Morrissey v. Brewer · Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois · Goldberg v. Kelly · Perry v. Sindermann
Cited together with Perry v. Sindermann · Bishop v. Wood · Mathews v. Eldridge · Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill · Goldberg v. Kelly
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 28,461 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“To have a property interest in a benefit, a person clearly must have more than an abstract need or desire for it. He must have more than a unilateral expectation of it. He must, instead, have a legitimate claim of entitlement to it.”
1,828 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Paul v. Davis · Bishop v. Wood“Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.”
62 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“had a property right in continued employment.”
20 later decisions quote this exact passage
How later courts have treated this case
Across 70 classified citations — whether each later court relied on, limited, or rejected this decision:
- 28explained
- 25cited without characterization
- 12followed
- 5distinguished
Treatment is classified from each citing court's own sentence. This is a running sample — coverage grows as the classification pass proceeds; overrulings are also tracked authoritatively in the case status.