Lemon v. Kurtzman’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
302 federal appellate · 98 district · 311 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,197 later decisions (37 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2024 · most notably International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States (1977), Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co. (1976)
302 federal appellate · 98 district · 311 state decisions — followed in 33 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 Younger v. Harris · Bruton v. United States · Stovall v. Denno · San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez · Johnson v. State of New Jersey
Cited together with Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson · Hecht Co. v. Bowles · Lemon v. Kurtzman · Linkletter v. Walker · Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
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 1,197 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[E]quitable remedies are a special blend of what is necessary, what is fair, and what is workable.”
59 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[Statutory or even judge-made rules of law are hard facts on which people must rely in making decisions and in shaping their conduct. This fact of legal life underpins our modern decisions recognizing a doctrine of nonre-troactivity.”
26 later decisions quote this exact passage““First, the decision to be applied nonretroactively must establish a new principle of law, either by overruling clear past precedent on which litigants may have relied . . . [citation omitted] or by deciding an issue of first impression whose resolution was not clearly foreshadowed. . . . [citation omitted] Second, it has been stressed that ‘we must. . . weigh the merits and demerits in each case by looking to the prior history of the rule in question, its purpose and effect, and whether retrospective operation will further or retard its operation.’ . . . [citation omitted] Finally, we have weighed the inequity imposed by retroactive application, for ‘[w]here a decision of this Court could produce substantial inequitable results if applied retroactively, there is ample basis in our cases for avoiding the “injustice or hardship” by a holding of nonretroactivity.’” (Citation omitted.)”
10 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.