Jackson v. Virginia’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
15,289 federal appellate · 723 district · 61,951 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 93,668 later decisions (202 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. (1986), State v. Thompkins (1997)
15,289 federal appellate · 723 district · 61,951 state decisions — followed in 49 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
reviewedWilliams v. Peyton (from Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Glasser v. United States · In the Matter of Samuel Winship · Brinegar v. United States · Wainwright v. Sykes
Cited together with Strickland v. Washington · Glasser v. United States · Brady v. State of Maryland · In the Matter of Samuel Winship · Chapman v. State of California
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 93,668 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.”
3,087 later decisions quote this exact passage“no person shall be made to suffer the onus of a criminal conviction except upon sufficient proof-defined as evidence necessary to convince a trier of fact beyond a reasonable doubt of the existence of every element of the offense.”
36 later decisions quote this exact passage“whether there was sufficient evidence to justify a rational trier of fact to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
21 later decisions quote this exact passage
How later courts have treated this case
Across 319 classified citations — whether each later court relied on, limited, or rejected this decision:
- 253followed
- 53explained
- 13cited without characterization
Treatment is classified from each citing court's own sentence. This is a running sample — coverage grows as the classification pass proceeds; overrulings are also tracked authoritatively in the case status.