City of Rome v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
214 federal appellate · 111 district · 52 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 802 later decisions (101 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2026 · most notably Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon (1985), Alexander v. Sandoval (2001)
214 federal appellate · 111 district · 52 state decisions — followed in 13 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
reviewedthe decision below (from District of Columbia District Court)
Relationships
Relies on Baker v. Carr · United States v. Nixon · William Marbury v. James Madison · Yick Wo v. Hopkins · M'Culloch v. State of Maryland
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 802 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“were specifically designed as an expansion of federal power and an intrusion on state sovereignty.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“Whenever a State or political subdivision ... shall enact or seek to administer any ... standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting different from that in force or effect on November 1, 1964 ... such State or subdivision may institute an action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for a declaratory judgment that such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color, or in contravention of the guarantees set forth in section 1973b(f)(2) of this title, and unless and until the court enters such judgment no person shall be denied the right to vote for failure to comply with such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure: Provided, That such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure may be enforced without such proceeding if the qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure has been submitted by the chief legal officer or other appropriate official of such State or subdivision to the Attorney General and the Attorney General has not interposed an objection within sixty days after such submission, or upon good cause shown, to facilitate an expedited approval within sixty days after such submission, the Attorney General has affirmatively indicated that such objection will not be made.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“Consider [a] town of 600 whites and 400 blacks with an at-large election to choose four council members. Each voter is able to cast four votes. Suppose there are eight white candidates, with the votes of the whites split among them approximately equally, and one black candidate, with all the blacks voting for him and no one else. The result is that each white candidate receives about 300 votes and the black candidate receives 400 votes. The black has probably won a seat. This technique is called single-shot voting.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.