McKaskle v. Wiggins’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
820 federal appellate · 62 district · 1,927 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,472 later decisions (33 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Teague v. Lane (1989), Arizona v. Fulminante (1991)
820 federal appellate · 62 district · 1,927 state decisions — followed in 49 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 Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Faretta v. California · Harris v. New York · Jones v. Barnes · Snyder v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts · Adams v. United States Ex Rel. McCann
Cited together with Faretta v. California · Gideon v. Wainwright · Arizona v. Fulminante · Tumey v. State of Ohio · Waller v. Georgia
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 3,472 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A defendant’s right to self-representation plainly encompasses certain specific rights to have his voice heard. The pro se defendant must be allowed to control the organization and content of his own defense, to make motions, to argue points of law, to participate in voir dire, to question witnesses, and to address the court and the jury at appropriate points in the trial.”
167 later decisions quote this exact passage“Since the right of self-representation is a right that when exercised usually increases the likelihood of a trial outcome unfavorable to the defendant, its denial is not amenable to `harmless error' analysis. The right is either respected or denied; its deprivation cannot be harmless.”
40 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“to relieve the judge of the need to explain and enforce basic rules of courtroom protocol or to assist the defendant in overcoming routine obstacles that stand in the way of the defendant's achievement of his own clearly indicated goals.”
26 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.