Pulliam v. Allen’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
379 federal appellate · 180 district · 229 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,429 later decisions (33 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Heck v. Humphrey (1994), Kentucky v. Graham (1985)
379 federal appellate · 180 district · 229 state decisions — followed in 34 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
reviewedAllen v. Burke (from Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1988
Relies on Hensley v. Eckerhart · Younger v. Harris · Blum v. Stenson · City of Los Angeles v. Lyons · Gerstein v. Pugh
Cited together with Stump v. Sparkman · Pierson v. Ray · Imbler v. Pachtman · Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Forrester v. White
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 1,429 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“judicial immunity is not a bar to prospective injunctive relief against a judicial officer acting in her judicial capacity.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the risk that judges will be harassed and their independence compromised by the threat of having to defend themselves against suits by disgruntled litigants,”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“to provide an independent avenue for protection of federal constitutional rights. The remedy was considered necessary because “state courts were being used to harass and injure individuals, either because the state courts were powerless to stop deprivations or were in league with those who were bent upon abrogation of federally protected rights.”
5 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.