Estelle v. Williams’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
1,010 federal appellate · 106 district · 2,033 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,817 later decisions (86 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Jackson v. Virginia (1979), Bell v. Wolfish (1979)
1,010 federal appellate · 106 district · 2,033 state decisions — followed in 49 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
reviewedWilliams v. Estelle (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Chapman v. State of California · Glasser v. United States · Schneckloth v. Bustamonte · Johnson v. Zerbst · Barker v. Wingo
Cited together with Holbrook v. Flynn · Illinois v. Allen · Strickland v. Washington · Chapman v. State of California · Wainwright v. Sykes
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 3,817 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The presumption of innocence, although not articulated in the Constitution, is a basic component of a fair trial under our system of criminal justice.”
141 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“is sufficient to negate the presence of compulsion necessary to establish a constitutional violation.”
38 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Under our adversary system, once a defendant has the assistance of counsel the vast array of trial decisions, strategic and tactical, which must be made before and during trial rests with the accused and his attorney. Any other approach would rewrite the duties of trial judges and counsel in our legal system.”
27 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.