In Re Edna Smith Primus’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
219 federal appellate · 54 district · 200 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 746 later decisions (37 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Central Hudson Gas Electric Corporation v. Public Service Commission of New York (1980), Members of the City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent (1984)
219 federal appellate · 54 district · 200 state decisions — followed in 31 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 26 U.S.C. § 501 · 42 U.S.C. § 1981 (Civil Rights Act of 1866)
Relies on New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois · Buckley v. Valeo · Alyeska Pipeline Service Company v. Wilderness Society · United States v. O'Brien
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 746 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he interest of the States in regulating lawyers is especially great since lawyers are essential to the primary governmental function of administering justice, and have historically been `officers of the court.'”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he ACLU engages in litigation as a vehicle for effective political expression and association, as well as a means of communicating useful information to the public,”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[f]or the ACLU, as for the NAACP, `litigation is not a technique of resolving private differences'; it is `a form of political expression' and `political association'”
4 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.