Davis v. Scherer’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
1,363 federal appellate · 820 district · 298 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4,538 later decisions (50 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Anderson v. Creighton (1987), Mitchell v. Forsyth (1985)
1,363 federal appellate · 820 district · 298 state decisions — followed in 40 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 Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth · Mathews v. Eldridge · Scheuer v. Rhodes · Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics
Cited together with Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Anderson v. Creighton · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Malley v. Briggs · Scheuer v. Rhodes
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 4,538 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”
182 later decisions quote this exact passage“objective reasonableness of [his] conduct as measured by reference to clearly established law.”
41 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Tubbesing v. Arnold · Craft v. Wipf“A plaintiff who seeks damages for violation of constitutional or statutory rights may overcome the defendant official's qualified immunity only by showing that those rights were clearly established at the time of the conduct at issue.”
19 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Elder v. Holloway · Doe v. Delie
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.