Greer v. Spock’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
610 federal appellate · 185 district · 131 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,525 later decisions (86 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2025 · most notably Connick v. Myers (1983), Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Commission (1977)
610 federal appellate · 185 district · 131 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedSpock v. David (from Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth · New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Buckley v. Valeo · Grayned v. City of Rockford · Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District
Cited together with Perry Education Ass'n v. Perry Local Educators' Ass'n · Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. · Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights · Adderley v. Florida · Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization
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 1,525 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he State, no less than a private owner of property, has power to preserve the property under its control for the use to which it is lawfully dedicated.”
27 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The guarantees of the First Amendment have never meant that people who want to propagandize protests or views have a constitutional right to do so whenever and however and wherever they please.”
22 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The notion that federal military reservations, like municipal streets and parks, have traditionally served as a place for free public assembly and communication of thoughts by private citizens is thus historically and constitutionally false.”
14 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.