Sample v. Bailey’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

55 federal appellate · 1 state decisions

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 125 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “First, we determine whether, based upon the applicable law, the facts viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff! ] show that a constitutional violation has occurred. Second, we consider whether the violation involved a clearly established constitutional right of which a reasonable person would have known. Third, we determine whether the plaintiff has offered sufficient evidence to indicate that what the official allegedly did was objectively unreasonable in light of the clearly established constitutional rights.”

   18 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Untalan v. City of Lorain · Barnes v. Wright

2. “Having established that there was a constitutional violation, we turn to the second step of the qualified immunity analysis — whether the constitutional right at issue was clearly established. “If the law at that time was not clearly established, an official could not ... fairly be said to ‘know1 that the law forbade conduct not previously identified as unlawful.” Harlow [v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 , 102 S.Ct. 2727 , 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982) ]. The constitutional right cannot simply be a general prohibition, but rather “the right the official is alleged to have violated must have been clearly established in a more particularized, and hence more relevant, sense: The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right.” Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 , 107 S.Ct. 3034 , 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987). The Court noted that “[t]his is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful, but it is to say that in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent.” Id. (internal citation omitted). “The relevant, dispositive inquiry in determining whether a right is clearly established is whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted.” Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194 , 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151 , 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 492 F. Supp. 2d 795 - May v. City of Springfield

3. “We have held that it has been clearly established in this circuit for the last twenty years that a criminal suspect “ha[s] a right not to be shot unless he [is] perceived to pose a threat to the pursuing officers or to others during flight.” Robinson v. Bibb, 840 F.2d 349, 351 (6th Cir.1988). This articulation of the Gamer rule is clearly established even in situations with diverse factual distinctions ... Thus regardless of whether the incident took place at day or night, in a building or outside, whether the suspect is fleeing or found, armed or unarmed, intoxicated or sober, mentally unbalanced or sane, it is clearly established that a reasonable police officer may not shoot the suspect unless the suspect poses a perceived threat of serious physical harm to the officer or others. These factual distinctions between cases do not alter the certainty about the law itself.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 426 F. Supp. 2d 601 - Bouggess v. Mattingly