Atkins v. Parker’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
245 federal appellate · 94 district · 155 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 754 later decisions (22 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2025 · most notably Ricci v. DeStefano (2009), Walters v. National Assn. of Radiation Survivors (1985)
245 federal appellate · 94 district · 155 state decisions — followed in 31 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 First Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth · Mathews v. Eldridge · Richardson v. Perales · Citizens to Preserve Overton Park, Inc. v. Volpe · Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co.
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 754 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“impose a constitutional limitation on the power of Congress to make substantive changes in the law of entitlement to public benefits.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“citizens are presumptively charged with knowledge of the law.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“`[t]he entire structure of our democratic government rests on the premise that the individual citizen is capable of informing himself about the particular policies that affect his destiny.'”
6 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.