Dobbert v. Florida’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
777 federal appellate · 120 district · 1,735 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,271 later decisions (68 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Landgraf v. USI Film Products (1994), Lindh v. Murphy (1997)
777 federal appellate · 120 district · 1,735 state decisions — followed in 47 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 Gregg v. Georgia · Furman v. Georgia · Grayned v. City of Rockford · Irvin v. Dowd · Police Department of Chicago v. Mosley
Cited together with Weaver v. Graham · Beazell v. State of Ohio Chatfield · Miller v. Florida · Murphy v. Florida · Irvin v. Dowd
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 3,271 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is settled, by decisions of this Court so well known that their citation may be dispensed with, that any statute which punishes as a crime an act previously committed, which was innocent when done; which makes more burdensome the punishment for a crime, after its commission, or which deprives one charged with crime of any defense available according to law at the time when the act was committed, is prohibited as ex post facto.”
176 later decisions quote this exact passage“extensive knowledge in the community of either the crimes or the putative criminal is not sufficient by itself to render a trial unconstitutionally unfair.”
36 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“To hold that the mere existence of any preconceived notion as to the guilt or innocence of an accused, without more, is sufficient to rebut the presumption of a prospective juror's impartiality would be to establish an impossible standard. It is sufficient if the juror can lay aside his impression or opinion and render a verdict based on the evidence presented in court.”
23 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.