Wayte v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
1,193 federal appellate · 295 district · 630 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,148 later decisions (41 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2026 · most notably Albright v. Oliver (1994), Heckler v. Chaney (1985)
1,193 federal appellate · 295 district · 630 state decisions — followed in 41 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
reviewedUnited States v. Wayte (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Anderson v. City of Bessemer City · Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. · United States v. Nixon · United States v. O'Brien · Poller v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc.
Cited together with Bordenkircher v. Hayes · United States v. Armstrong · Oyler v. Boles · United States v. Goodwin · McCleskey v. Kemp
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 3,148 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“So long as the prosecutor has probable cause to believe that the accused committed an offense defined by statute, the decision whether or not to prosecute, and what charge to file or bring before a grand jury, generally rests entirely in his discretion.”
160 later decisions quote this exact passage“[a]lthough the right to petition and the right to free speech are separate guarantees, they are related and generally subject to the same constitutional analysis.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“according to ordinary equal protection standards.”
5 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.