Harris v. Rivera’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
239 federal appellate · 42 district · 236 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 737 later decisions (35 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2025 · most notably United States v. Powell (1984), City of Los Angeles v. Heller (1986)
239 federal appellate · 42 district · 236 state decisions — followed in 28 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
reviewedRivera v. Harris (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Jackson v. Virginia · Morrissey v. Brewer · Wolff v. McDonnell · North Carolina v. Pearce · Townsend v. Sain
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 737 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In bench trials, judges routinely hear inadmissible evidence that they are presumed to ignore when making decisions.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the unreviewable power of a jury to return a verdict of not guilty for impermissible reasons.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the judge’s actual observation of everything that transpired in the courtroom created some doubt about the guilt of one defendant that he might or might not be able to articulate in a convincing manner. In this case, if the judge was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that [two defendants] wei;e both guilty, it would be most unfortunate if a concern about the plausibility of a lingering doubt about [a third defendant] should cause him to decide to convict all three rather than to try to articulate the basis for his doubt.”
6 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.