Vance v. Bradley’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
847 federal appellate · 293 district · 688 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,956 later decisions (124 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2024 · most notably Bell v. Wolfish (1979), City of Cleburne Texas v. Cleburne Living Center (1985)
847 federal appellate · 293 district · 688 state decisions — followed in 43 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from District of Columbia District Court)
Relationships
Relies on Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth · Buckley v. Valeo · Dandridge v. Williams · San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez · Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, Inc.
Cited together with Massachusetts Board of Retirement v. Murgia · City of Cleburne Texas v. Cleburne Living Center · City of New Orleans v. Dukes · Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, Inc. · Minnesota v. Clover Leaf Creamery Co.
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 2,956 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The Constitution presumes that, absent some reason to infer antipathy, even improvident decisions will eventually be rectified by the democratic process and that judicial intervention is generally unwarranted no matter how unwisely we may think a political branch has acted. Thus, we will not overturn such a statute unless the varying treatment of different groups or persons is so unrelated to the achievement of any combination of legitimate purposes that we can only conclude that the legislature’s actions were irrational.”
122 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“those challenging the legislative judgment must convince the court that the legislative facts on which the classification is apparently based could not reasonably be conceived to be true by the governmental decisionmaker.”
65 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[I]n a case like this perfection is by no means required.”
15 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.