Rushen v. Spain’s Empirical Analysis
1983
Citation profile
649 federal appellate · 60 district · 579 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,822 later decisions (37 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Brecht v. Abrahamson (1993), Arizona v. Fulminante (1991)
649 federal appellate · 60 district · 579 state decisions — followed in 42 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 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Chapman v. State of California · Glasser v. United States · Johnson v. Zerbst · Faretta v. California · Gideon v. Wainwright
Cited together with Strickland v. Washington · Chapman v. State of California · United States v. Gagnon · Smith v. Phillips · Snyder v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts
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 1,822 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“conclusion that an unrecorded ex parte communication between trial judge and juror can never be harmless error ignores [the] day-to-day realities of courtroom life and undermines society's interest in the administration of justice.”
29 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“in a far better position than the federal courts to answer.”
20 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he mere occurrence of an ex parte conversation between a trial judge and a juror does not constitute a deprivation of any constitutional right. The defense has no constitutional right to be present at every interaction between a judge and a juror, nor is there a constitutional right to have a court reporter transcribe every such communication.”
14 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.