Cope v. Scott’s Empirical Analysis
45 F.3d 445 · 1995
Citation profile
46 federal appellate · 45 district · 9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 139 later decisions — most recently June 2025 · most notably Macharia v. United States (2003), Gustave-Schmidt v. Chao (2002)
46 federal appellate · 45 district · 9 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 23 U.S.C. § 402 · 28 U.S.C. § 1346 (Federal Tort Claims Act) · 28 U.S.C. § 2680
Relies on United States v. Gaubert · Berkovitz v. United States · United States v. S.A. Empresa De Viacao Aerea Rio Grandense · Indian Towing Company v. United States · Hebert v. Brown
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 139 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“federal statute, regulation, or policy specifically prescribes a course of action for an employee to follow.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“any claim ... based upon the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty on the part of a federal agency or an employee of the Government, whether or not the discretion involved be abused.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[f]or a complaint to survive a motion to dismiss, it must allege facts which would support a finding that the challenged actions are not the kind of conduct that can be said to be grounded in the policy of the regulatory regime. The focus of the inquiry is not on the agent’s subjective intent in exercising the discretion conferred by statute or regulation, but on the nature of the actions taken and on whether they are susceptible to policy analysis.”
4 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.