Kolender v. Lawson’s Empirical Analysis
1983
Citation profile
1,637 federal appellate · 503 district · 2,395 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 6,197 later decisions (95 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Illinois v. Gates (1983), Michigan v. Long (1983)
1,637 federal appellate · 503 district · 2,395 state decisions — followed in 48 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
reviewedLawson v. Kolender (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Terry v. Ohio · Florida v. Royer · United States v. Mendenhall · Adams v. Williams
Cited together with Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc. · Smith v. Goguen · Broadrick v. Oklahoma · Grayned v. City of Rockford · Connally v. General Construction Co.
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 6,197 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“As generally stated, the void-for-vagueness doctrine requires that a penal statute define the criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”
319 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“credible and reliable” identification and to account for their presence when requested by a police officer. Without much discussion, the majority concluded that the California statute”
27 later decisions quote this exact passage“[V]agueness challenges to statutes which do not involve First Amendment freedoms must be examined in light of the facts of the case at hand. One to whose conduct a statute clearly applies may not successfully challenge it for vagueness.”
26 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.