Smith v. Digmon’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
168 federal appellate · 58 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 397 later decisions (5 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2020 · most notably Castille v. Peoples (1989), Daye v. Attorney General of New York (1982)
168 federal appellate · 58 district · 1 state decisions
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
reviewedthe decision below (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on United States v. Wade · Simmons v. United States · Stovall v. Denno · Gilbert v. California
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 397 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(i)t is too obvious to merit extended discussion that whether the exhaustion requirement of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b) has been satisfied cannot turn on whether a state appellate court chooses to ignore in its opinion a federal constitutional claim squarely raised in the petitioner's brief in the state court....”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“to the District Court in petitioner's traverse to the State's response to his petition,”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. No. 96-2355
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.