Ferguson v. Kelly’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
17 federal appellate · 2 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 35 later decisions — most recently March 1999 · most notably Campbell v. United States Department of Justice (1998), Lesar v. United States Department of Justice (1980)
17 federal appellate · 2 district · 2 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 5 U.S.C. § 552 (Freedom of Information Act)
Relies on Nix v. United States · Wellford v. Hardin · 315 F. Supp. 175 - Wellford v. Hardin · Tarnopol v. Federal Bureau of Investigation · 448 F. Supp. 567 - Flower v. Federal Bureau of Investigation
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 35 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“disclose the identity of a confidential source and, in the case of a record compiled by a criminal law enforcement authority in the course of a criminal investigation, or by an agency conducting a lawful national security intelligence investigation, confidential information furnished only by the confidential source.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Defendants have presented no new arguments why the term “source” should encompass corporate entities. We reiterate that a corporate source simply is not as concerned as an individual with the disclosure of its identity and does not have the same expectation of privacy. We conclude that the possibility of losing such sources of information because of disclosure is slight. Thus, the policy of insuring an uninterrupted flow of information to the government is not significantly hampered, and the FOIA policy of disclosure is furthered.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Allowing such a defense would undercut the Act's broad policy of disclosure.”
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.