Marshall v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1974
Citation profile
175 federal appellate · 38 district · 149 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 485 later decisions (25 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Massachusetts Board of Retirement v. Murgia (1976), Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas (1974)
175 federal appellate · 38 district · 149 state decisions — followed in 23 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
reviewedMarshall v. Parker (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Dandridge v. Williams · San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez · McGowan v. State of Maryland Gallagher · Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, Inc. · Bolling v. Sharpe
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 485 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[w]hen Congress undertakes to act in areas fraught with medical and scientific uncertainties, legislative options must be especially broad and courts should be cautious not to rewrite legislation, even assuming, arguendo, that judges with more direct exposure to the problem might make wiser choices.”
18 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“legislative classifications need not be perfect or ideal.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“an offender who has been convicted of a felony on two or more prior occasions.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.