Hunt v. McNair’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
168 federal appellate · 70 district · 112 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 626 later decisions (62 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2020 · most notably Agostini v. Felton Chancellor Board of Education of the City of New York (1997), Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of University of Virginia (1995)
168 federal appellate · 70 district · 112 state decisions — followed in 22 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
Applies 26 U.S.C. § 103
Relies on Lemon v. Kurtzman · School District of Abington Township Pennsylvania v. Schempp J Murray III · Walz v. Tax Comm'n of City of New York · Engel v. Vitale · Committee for Public Education & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist
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 626 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Aid normally may be thought to have a primary effect of advancing religion when it flows to an institution in which religion is so pervasive that a substantial portion of its functions are subsumed in the religious mission or when it funds a specifically religious activity in an otherwise substantially secular setting.”
35 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(A) legislative enactment does not contravene the Establishment Clause if it has a secular purpose, if its principal or primary effect neither advances nor inhibits religion, and if it does not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The “state aid” involved in this case is of a very special sort. We have here no expenditure of public funds, either by grant or loan, no reimbursement by a State for expenditures made by a parochial school or college, and no extending or committing of a State’s credit. Rather, the only state aid consists, not of financial assistance directly or indirectly which would implicate public funds or credit, but the creation of an instrumentality (the Authority) through which educational institutions may borrow funds on the basis of their own credit and the security of their own property upon more favorable interest terms than otherwise would be available. The Supreme Court of New Jersey characterized the assistance rendered an educational institution under an act generally similar to the South Carolina Act as merely being a “governmental service.” The South Carolina Supreme Court, in the opinion below, described the role of the State as that of a “mere conduit.””
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.