Singleton v. Wulff’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
3,972 federal appellate · 316 district · 361 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8,166 later decisions (116 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Rakas v. Illinois (1979), Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc. (1982)
3,972 federal appellate · 316 district · 361 state decisions — followed in 36 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
reviewedWulff v. Signleton (from Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1291 · 42 U.S.C. § 1396 (§ 1900 of the Social Security Act of 1935)
Relies on Warth v. Seldin · Baker v. Carr · Roe v. Wade · Broadrick v. Oklahoma
Cited together with Warth v. Seldin · Hormel v. Helvering · Barrows v. Jackson · Craig v. Boren · Roe v. Wade
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 8,166 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is the general rule, of course, that a federal appellate court does not consider an issue not passed upon below.”
176 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“The matter of what questions may be taken up and resolved for the first time on appeal is one left primarily to the discretion of the courts of appeals, to be exercised on the facts of individual cases.”
146 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“inextricably bound up with the activity the litigant wishes to pursue,”
63 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.