Blum v. Stenson’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
1,864 federal appellate · 1,641 district · 643 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8,773 later decisions (64 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2026 · most notably Pierce v. Underwood (1988), Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air (1986)
1,864 federal appellate · 1,641 district · 643 state decisions — followed in 44 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 Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Hensley v. Eckerhart · Alyeska Pipeline Service Company v. Wilderness Society · Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc. · Rideout v. United States
Cited together with Hensley v. Eckerhart · Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air · Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air · Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc. · City of Riverside v. Rivera
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 8,773 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“one calculated on the basis of rates and practices prevailing in the market, i.e., “in line with those [rates] prevailing in the community for similar services by lawyers of reasonably comparable skill, experience, and reputation,” and one that grants the successful civil rights plaintiff a “fully compensatory fee,” comparable to what “is traditional with attorneys compensated by a fee-paying client.””
178 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“the special skill and experience of counsel,”
69 later decisions quote this exact passage“The most useful starting point for determining the amount of a reasonable fee is the number of hours reasonably expended on the litigation multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate.”
55 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.