Coker v. Georgia’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
372 federal appellate · 54 district · 1,089 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,970 later decisions (146 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Lockett v. Ohio (1978), Tennessee v. Garner (1985)
372 federal appellate · 54 district · 1,089 state decisions — followed in 45 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 · Ohio Bureau of Employment Services v. Hodory · California v. Green · Woodson v. North Carolina
Cited together with Gregg v. Georgia · Furman v. Georgia · Woodson v. North Carolina · Lockett v. Ohio · Enmund 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 1,970 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) makes no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment and hence is nothing more than the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering; or (2) is grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crime.”
48 later decisions quote this exact passage“death is ... a disproportionate penalty for the crime of raping an adult woman.”
40 later decisions quote this exact passage“Eighth Amendment judgments should not be, or appear to be, merely the subjective views of individual Justices; judgment should be informed by objective factors to the maximum possible extent.”
23 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.