Lenhard v. Wolff a-172’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
33 federal appellate · 32 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 140 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2018 · most notably Whitmore v. Arkansas (1990), State v. Tyler (1990)
33 federal appellate · 32 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.
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1651
Relies on Lockett v. Ohio · Proffitt v. Florida · Evans v. Alabama · Gilmore v. Utah · Evans III v. Bennett a-868
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 140 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The idea that the deliberate decision of one under sentence of death to abandon possible additional legal avenues of attack on that sentence cannot be a rational decision regardless of its motive, suggests that the preservation of one’s own life at whatever cost is the summum bonum, a proposition with respect to which the greatest philosophers and theologians have not agreed and with respect to which the United States Constitution by its terms does not speak.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“however worthy and high minded the motives of 'next friends' may be, they inevitably run the risk of making the actual [party] a pawn to be manipulated on a chessboard larger than his own case.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[I]t strikes me that from a purely technical standpoint a public defender may appear as “next friend” with as much justification as the mother of [the real party in interest] ....”
2 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.