Chapman v. Meier’s Empirical Analysis
1975
Citation profile
156 federal appellate · 86 district · 64 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 683 later decisions (72 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2025 · most notably City of Mobile v. Bolden (1980), Maher v. Roe (1977)
156 federal appellate · 86 district · 64 state decisions — followed in 18 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 Baker v. Carr · Reynolds v. Sims · Wesberry v. Sanders · White v. Regester · Whitcomb v. Chavis
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 683 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“unless there are persuasive justifications, a court-ordered reapportionment plan of a state legislature must avoid use of multimember districts, and, as well, must ordinarily achieve the goal of population equality with little more than de minimis variation.”
17 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Connor v. Finch · Evenwel v. Abbott“reapportionment is primarily the duty and responsibility of the State through its legislature or other body, rather than of a federal court.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“We believe that a population deviation of [20 percent] in a court-ordered plan is constitutionally impermissible in the absence of significant state policies or other acceptable considerations that require adoption of a plan with so great a variance.”
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.