Middlesex County Ethics Committee v. Garden State Bar Ass'n’s Empirical Analysis
1982
Citation profile
1,003 federal appellate · 666 district · 73 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,723 later decisions (44 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman (1983), Morales v. Trans World Airlines, Inc. (1992)
1,003 federal appellate · 666 district · 73 state decisions — followed in 18 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
reviewedthe decision below (from Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Younger v. Harris · Gerstein v. Pugh · Steffel v. Thompson · Dombrowski v. Pfister · Starnes v. Penrod Drilling Co.
Cited together with Younger v. Harris · Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd. · Ohio Civil Rights Commission v. Dayton Christian Schools, Inc. · Pennzoil Company v. Texaco Inc · Moore v. Sims
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 3,723 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he policies underlying Younger are fully applicable to noncriminal judicial proceedings when important state interests are involved.”
173 later decisions quote this exact passage“bad faith, harassment, or some other extraordinary circumstance that would make abstention inappropriate,”
24 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“before any proceedings of substance on the merits have taken place in the federal court.”
17 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.