Wallace v. Jaffree’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
615 federal appellate · 156 district · 108 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,679 later decisions (79 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably City of Boerne v. Flores (1997), Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of University of Virginia (1995)
615 federal appellate · 156 district · 108 state decisions — followed in 19 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 Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc. · Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. · McGowan v. State of Maryland Gallagher · Tennessee v. Garner · Cantwell v. State of Connecticut
Cited together with Lemon v. Kurtzman · Lynch v. Donnelly · County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union · Edwards v. Aguillard · School District of Abington Township Pennsylvania v. Schempp J Murray III
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 1,679 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
83 later decisions quote this exact passage“that religion or a particular religious belief is favored or preferred.”
20 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[T]he religious liberty protected by the Establishment Clause is infringed when the government makes adherence to religion relevant to a person’s standing in the political community. Direct government action endorsing religion or a particular religious practice is invalid under this approach because it “sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.””
15 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.