Kimmelman v. Morrison’s Empirical Analysis
1986
Citation profile
1,115 federal appellate · 350 district · 1,735 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4,855 later decisions (46 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2026 · most notably Penson v. Ohio (1988), Brecht v. Abrahamson (1993)
1,115 federal appellate · 350 district · 1,735 state decisions — followed in 42 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 Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Jackson v. Virginia · Chapman v. State of California · Katz v. United States · Johnson v. Zerbst
Cited together with Strickland v. Washington · Williams v. Taylor · United States v. Cronic · Stone v. Powell · Coleman v. Thompson
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 4,855 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The essence of an ineffective-assistance claim is that counsel's unprofessional errors so upset the adversarial balance between defense and prosecution that the trial was rendered unfair and the verdict rendered suspect”
238 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“that counsel's errors were so serious as to deprive the defendant of a fair trial, a trial whose result is reliable.”
30 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[F]ailure to file a suppression motion does not constitute per se ineffective assistance of counsel.”
16 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.