Waters v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis
46 F.3d 1506 · 1995
Citation profile
82 federal appellate · 3 district · 38 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 215 later decisions — most recently April 2025 · most notably Chandler v. United States (2000), Putman v. Head (2001)
82 federal appellate · 3 district · 38 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 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996) · 28 U.S.C. § 46
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Gideon v. Wainwright · United States v. Leon · Teague v. Lane · Estelle v. McGuire
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 215 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The mere fact that other witnesses might have been available or that other testimony might have been elicited from those who testified is not a sufficient ground to prove ineffectiveness of counsel.”
21 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Dyer v. Calderon · Putman v. Head“'The [ineffective-assistance] test has nothing to do with what the best lawyers would have done. Nor is the test even what most good lawyers would have done. We ask only whether some reasonable lawyer ... could have acted, in the circumstances, as defense counsel acted ....'”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Crawford v. Head · State v. Arthur“A lawyer can almost always do something more in every case. But the Constitution requires a good deal less than maximum performance.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.