Malley v. Briggs’s Empirical Analysis
1986
Citation profile
3,490 federal appellate · 1,450 district · 822 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10,645 later decisions (77 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Anderson v. Creighton (1987), Heck v. Humphrey (1994)
3,490 federal appellate · 1,450 district · 822 state decisions — followed in 45 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
reviewedBriggs v. Malley (from First Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Illinois v. Gates · United States v. Leon · Monroe v. Pape · Jones v. United States
Cited together with Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Anderson v. Creighton · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Graham v. Connor · Imbler v. Pachtman
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 10,645 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.”
626 later decisions quote this exact passage“their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”
106 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[Where] a magistrate acts mistakenly in issuing a warrant but within the range of professional competence of a magistrate, the officer who requested the warrant cannot be held liable. But it is different if no officer of reasonable competence would have requested the warrant, i.e., his request is outside the range of the professional competence expected of an officer. If the magistrate issues the warrant in such a case, his action is not just a reasonable mistake, but an unacceptable error indicating gross incompetence or neglect of duty. The officer then cannot excuse his own default by pointing to the greater incompetence of the magistrate.”
24 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.