Moore v. Sims’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
647 federal appellate · 297 district · 77 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,028 later decisions (44 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Santosky v. Kramer (1982), Patsy v. Board of Regents of Fla. (1982)
647 federal appellate · 297 district · 77 state decisions — followed in 15 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 Younger v. Harris · Monroe v. Pape · Railroad Commission v. Pullman Co. · Fuentes v. Shevin · Gerstein v. Pugh
Cited together with Younger v. Harris · Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd. · Middlesex County Ethics Committee v. Garden State Bar Ass'n · Juidice v. Vail · Trainor v. Hernandez
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 2,028 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“unless state law clearly bars the interposition of the constitutional claims.”
86 later decisions quote this exact passage“The policy of equitable restraint expressed in Younger v. Harris, in short, is founded on the premise that ordinarily a pending state prosecution provides the accused a fair and sufficient opportunity for vindication of federal constitutional rights. See Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U.S. 452 , 460 [94 S.Ct. 1209, 1216, 39 L.Ed.2d 505]. Only if 'extraordinary circumstances' render the state court incapable of fairly and fully adjudicating the federal issues before it, can there be any relaxation of the deference to be accorded to the state criminal process.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[f]amily relations are a traditional area of state concern.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow · Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma, an Organized Tribe of Indians, as Recognized Under and by the Laws of the United States v. State of Oklahoma Ex Rel. David L. Thompson, the Duly Elected District Attorney of Ottawa County, Oklahoma, Bob Sills, the Duly Elected Sheriff of Ottawa County, Oklahoma Jon D. Douthitt, Associate District Judge for the 13th Judicial Administrative District of Oklahoma, Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma, a Federally Recognized Indian Tribe Jesse McKibben Chairman of Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma v. State of Oklahoma Ex Rel. David L. Thompson, District Attorney of Ottawa County, Morland T. Barton, Assistant District Attorney of Ottawa County Bob Sills, the Duly Elected Sheriff of Ottawa County, Oklahoma Jon D. Douthitt, Judge of the District Court of Ottawa County
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.