Marshall v. Lonberger’s Empirical Analysis
1983
Citation profile
909 federal appellate · 126 district · 483 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,653 later decisions (58 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably Miller-El v. Cockrell Director Texas Department of Criminal Justice Institutional Division (2003), Estelle v. McGuire (1991)
909 federal appellate · 126 district · 483 state decisions — followed in 34 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
reviewedLonberger v. Jago (from Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Chapman v. State of California · Boykin v. Alabama · Bruton v. United States · Townsend v. Sain · Sandstrom v. Montana
Cited together with Strickland v. Washington · Sumner v. Mata · Jackson v. Virginia · Sumner v. Mata · Williams v. Taylor
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 2,653 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the Due Process Clause does not permit the federal courts to engage in a finely tuned review of the wisdom of state evidentiary rules.”
73 later decisions quote this exact passage“Face to face with living witnesses the original trier of facts holds a position of advantage from which appellate judges are excluded. In doubtful cases the exercise of his power of observation often proves the most accurate method of ascertaining the truth .... How can we say the judge is wrong? We never saw the witnesses .... To the sophistication and sagacity of the trial judge the law confines the duty of appraisal.”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“We greatly doubt that Congress, when it used the language `fairly supported by the record’ considered `as a whole’ intended to authorize broader federal review of state court credibility determinations than are authorized in appeals within the federal system itself.”
8 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.