Scott v. Illinois’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
370 federal appellate · 51 district · 1,117 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,844 later decisions (36 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2025 · most notably Berkemer v. McCarty (1984), Lassiter v. Department of Social Services of Durham County North Carolina (1981)
370 federal appellate · 51 district · 1,117 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 Johnson v. Zerbst · Gideon v. Wainwright · Powell v. State of Alabama Patterson · Pointer v. Texas · Griffin v. People of the State of Illinois
Cited together with Argersinger v. Hamlin · Gideon v. Wainwright · Baldasar v. Illinois · Nichols v. United States · Burgett v. Texas
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 1,844 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“that the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution require only that no indigent criminal defendant be sentenced to a term of imprisonment unless the State has afforded him the right to assistance of appointed counsel in his defense.”
44 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“absent a knowing and intelligent waiver, no person may be imprisoned for any offense, whether classified as petty, misdemeanor, or felony, unless he was represented by counsel at his trial.”
35 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“eminently sound and warrant[ing] adoption of actual imprisonment as the line defining the constitutional right to appointment of counsel.”
19 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.