Rummel v. Estelle’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
947 federal appellate · 117 district · 1,506 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,431 later decisions (61 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Solem v. Helm (1983), Rhodes v. Chapman (1981)
947 federal appellate · 117 district · 1,506 state decisions — followed in 46 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
reviewedRummel v. Estelle (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Erie Co v. Tompkins · Morrissey v. Brewer · Wainwright v. Sykes · Gregg v. Georgia · Furman v. Georgia
Cited together with Solem v. Helm · Harmelin v. Michigan · Hutto v. Davis · Ewing v. California · Weems v. United States
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 3,431 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Like the line dividing felony theft from petty larceny, the point at which a recidivist will be deemed to have demonstrated the necessary propensities and the amount of time that the recidivist will be isolated from society are matters largely within the discretion of the punishing jurisdiction.”
82 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[o]utside the context of capital punishment, successful challenges to the proportionality of particular sentences have been exceedingly rare.”
45 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“'purely a matter of legislative prerogative,'”
35 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.