Andrus v. Sierra Club’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
331 federal appellate · 122 district · 9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 806 later decisions (27 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (1992), Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (2008)
331 federal appellate · 122 district · 9 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
reviewedSierra Club v. Andrus (from District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill · Kleppe v. Sierra Club · General Electric Co. v. Gilbert · American Trucking Associations v. Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company National Automobile Transporters Association of Detroit Michigan
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 806 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“CEQ's interpretation of NEPA is entitled to substantial deference.”
58 later decisions quote this exact passage“[a]pproval of specific projects such as construction ... activities located in a defined geographic area,”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment.”
8 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.