Roberts v. Louisiana’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
224 federal appellate · 37 district · 895 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,442 later decisions (113 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Gregg v. Georgia (1976), Lockett v. Ohio (1978)
224 federal appellate · 37 district · 895 state decisions — followed in 41 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 North Carolina v. Alford · Brady v. United States · Gregg v. Georgia · Santobello v. New York · Witherspoon v. Illinois
Cited together with Woodson v. North Carolina · Gregg v. Georgia · Furman v. Georgia · Jurek v. Texas · Proffitt v. Florida
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 1,442 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“even if there is not a scintilla of evidence to support the lesser verdicts.”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“lack of focus on the circumstances of the particular offense and the character and propensities of the offender,”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“the killing of a human being when the offender has a specific intent to kill, under circumstances that would be first degree murder under Article 30, but the killing is accomplished without any of the aggravating circumstances listed in Article 905.4 of the Louisiana Code of Criminal Procedure.”
7 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.