Larson v. Valente’s Empirical Analysis
1982
Citation profile
518 federal appellate · 160 district · 140 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,449 later decisions (76 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Employment Division Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. L Smith (1990), Roberts v. United States Jaycees (1984)
518 federal appellate · 160 district · 140 state decisions — followed in 23 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
reviewedValente v. Larson (from Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Warth v. Seldin · Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle · Baker v. Carr · Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc. · Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp.
Cited together with Lemon v. Kurtzman · Lynch v. Donnelly · Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife · Everson v. Board of Education · Walz v. Tax Comm'n of City of New York
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 1,449 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.”
38 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A] plaintiff satisfies the redressability requirement when he shows that a favorable decision will relieve a discrete injury to himself. He need not show that a favorable decision will relieve his every injury.”
13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“must be invalidated unless it is justified by a compelling governmental interest ... and unless it is closely fitted to further that interest.”
12 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.