Wainwright v. Stone’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
156 federal appellate · 30 district · 289 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 603 later decisions (11 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Kolender v. Lawson (1983), New York v. Ferber (1982)
156 federal appellate · 30 district · 289 state decisions — followed in 32 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
reviewedRaymond R. Stone v. Louie L. Wainwright, Director, Etc., Eugene P. Huffman v. James F. Tompkins (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on United States v. Harriss · Winters v. People of State of New York · Great Northern Ry Co v. Sunburst Oil & Refining Co · United States v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co. · Mishkin v. State of New York
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 603 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[H]as no voice upon the subject. A state in defining the limits of adherence to precedent may make a choice for itself between the principle of forward operation and that of relation backward. It may say that decisions of its highest court, though later overruled, are the law none the less for intermediate transactions .... The choice for any state may be determined by the juristic philosophy of the judges of her courts, their conceptions of law, its origin and nature. We review, not the wisdom of their philosophies, but the legality of their acts. . . . If this is the common-law doctrine of adherence to precedent as understood and enforced by the courts of [the state], we are not at liberty, for anything contained in the Constitution of the United States, to thrust upon those courts a different conception either of the binding force of precedent or of the meaning of the judicial process.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Prater v. Maggio · Fiore v. White“take the statute as though it read precisely as the highest court of the State has interpreted it.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Clayton v. State · Young v. State“the abominable and detestable crime against nature, either with mankind or with beast”
4 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.