Marsh v. Chambers’s Empirical Analysis
1983
Citation profile
516 federal appellate · 84 district · 91 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,145 later decisions (53 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Harmelin v. Michigan (1991), Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of University of Virginia (1995)
516 federal appellate · 84 district · 91 state decisions — followed in 14 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
reviewedChambers v. Marsh (from Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Katz v. United States · Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. · McGowan v. State of Maryland Gallagher · Cantwell v. State of Connecticut · Lemon v. Kurtzman
Cited together with Lemon v. Kurtzman · Lynch v. Donnelly · County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union · Lee v. Weisman · School District of Abington Township Pennsylvania v. Schempp J Murray III
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 1,145 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“God save the United States and this Honorable Court.”
84 later decisions quote this exact passage“The content of the prayer is not of concern to judges where, as here, there is no indication that the prayer opportunity has been exploited to proselytize or advance any one, or to disparage any other, faith or belief. That being so, it is not for us to embark on a sensitive evaluation or to parse the content of a particular prayer.”
35 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“`nonsectarian,' `Judeo Christian,' and with `elements of the American civil religion.'”
13 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.