Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
771 federal appellate · 273 district · 297 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,435 later decisions (67 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Bell v. Wolfish (1979), Hudson v. Palmer (1984)
771 federal appellate · 273 district · 297 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.
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2281 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Wolff v. McDonnell · Skidmore v. Swift & Co. · Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District · Bounds v. Smith · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. State of Alabama Patterson
Cited together with Bell v. Wolfish · Pell v. Procunier · Procunier v. Martinez · Turner v. Safley · Wolff v. McDonnell
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 2,435 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Perhaps the most obvious of the First Amendment rights that are necessarily curtailed by confinement are those associational rights that the First Amendment protects outside of prison walls.”
30 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“not inconsistent with his status as a prisoner or with the legitimate penological objectives of the corrections system.”
30 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[C]entral to all other corrections goals is the institutional consideration of internal security within the corrections facilities themselves.”
28 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.