Ford v. Kentucky’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

21 federal appellate · 22 state decisions

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 53 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Because the opinion announcing the judgment in Peters was joined by only three Justices, Peters did not definitively resolve the standing question raised in this petition for certiorari. The Court also declined in Alexander v. Louisiana, 405 U.S. 625 , 633-34, 92 S.Ct. 1221 , 31 L.Ed.2d 586 (1972), to decide whether males could challenge the statutory exemption of women from state grand jury service, although Justice Douglas would have reached the question and invalidated the statute on federal due process grounds.... These conflicting pronouncements from the Court and our failure to speak definitively to the issue have spawned the sort of confusion in the lower courts that calls for the exercise of this Court’s certiorari jurisdiction. In contrast to the views of the Kentucky Supreme Court, which are shared by the Supreme Court of Tennessee, see State v. Coe, 655 S.W.2d 903 (1983), at least two Federal Courts of Appeals have stated that a male defendant does have a due process right not to have women systematically underrepresented on the state grand jury that indicts him. Gibson v. Zant, 705 F.2d 1543 (11th Cir.1983); Folston v. Allsbrook, 691 F.2d 184 , 186 n. 3 (4th Cir.1982), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 939 , 103 S.Ct. 2111 , 77 L.Ed.2d 314 (1983).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Coe v. Bell

2. “any large and identifiable segment of the community is excluded from jury service,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. State v. Gorman