Howe v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
75 federal appellate · 23 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 201 later decisions (5 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2015 · most notably Olim v. Wakinekona (1983), Shango v. Jurich (1982)
75 federal appellate · 23 district · 7 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedHowe v. Civiletti (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Udall v. Tallman · Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill · Reiter v. Sonotone Corp. · National Labor Relations Board v. Bell Aerospace Co. · Rubin 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 201 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(a) The Attorney General, when the Director shall certify that proper and adequate treatment facilities and personnel are available, is hereby authorized to contract with the proper officials of a State or Territory for the custody, care, subsistence, education, treatment, and training of persons convicted of criminal offenses in the courts of such State or Territory: Provided, That any such contract shall provide for reimbursing the United States in full for all costs or other expenses involved. (c) Unless otherwise specifically provided in the contract, a person committed to the Attorney General hereunder shall be subject to all the provisions of law and regulations applicable to persons committed for violations of laws of the United States not inconsistent with the sentence imposed.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“The petitioner’s reading of the statute strains the plain meaning of its language. The act of certification by the Director is nothing more than the starting point in the process of contractual negotiation envisioned by § 5003(a). Absent surplus capacity in the federal system, discussions between federal and state authorities regarding the transfer of state prisoners to federal facilities would be pointless. Once the Director certifies that a surplus capacity exists— that is, that there is room for more inmates — the transfer becomes a possibility. The certification clause cannot be read as requiring any more than that federal facilities and personnel must be available to handle whatever prisoners are received. ... The certification requirement is simply a housekeeping measure designed to ensure that the federal system has the capacity to absorb state prisoners. Nothing in the language of § 5003(a) restricts or limits the use of federal prison facilities to those state prisoners who are in need of some particular treatment.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Brown v. Smith“interpretation of the statute merits greater than normal weight because it was the [Corps] that drafted the legislation and steered it through Congress with little debate.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.