Polk County v. Dodson’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
883 federal appellate · 404 district · 352 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,742 later decisions (83 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Penson v. Ohio (1988), City of Canton v. Harris (1989)
883 federal appellate · 404 district · 352 state decisions — followed in 38 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
reviewedDodson v. Polk County (from Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Anders v. California · Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York · Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co. · Estelle v. Gamble · Haines v. Kerner
Cited together with Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York · Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co. · City of Canton v. Harris · Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co. · West v. Atkins
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 3,742 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a public defender does not act under color of state law when performing a lawyer's traditional functions as counsel to a defendant in a criminal proceeding.”
24 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the moving force of the constitutional violation.”
22 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The system assumes that adversarial testing will ultimately advance the public interest in truth and fairness”
20 later decisions 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.