Davis v. Bandemer’s Empirical Analysis
1986
Citation profile
124 federal appellate · 46 district · 106 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 626 later decisions (51 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably Thornburg v. Gingles (1986), McConnell United States Senator et al. v. Federal Election Commission et al. (2003)
124 federal appellate · 46 district · 106 state decisions — followed in 22 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.
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1973 (§ 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965)
Relies on Edelman v. Jordan · Baker v. Carr · Washington v. Davis · San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez · Reynolds v. Sims
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 626 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[a]s long as redistricting is done by a legislature, it should not be very difficult to prove that the likely political consequences of the reapportionment were intended.”
52 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“attempt to recreate the complex process of legislative apportionment in the context of adversary litigation in order to reconcile the competing claims of [two] political ... groups. Even if ... such claims [were limited] to organized political parties, the fact remains that the losing party or the losing group of legislators in every reapportionment will ... be invited to fight the battle anew in federal court. [Davis, supra, 478 U.S. at 147, 106 S.Ct. at 2818 , 92 L.Ed.2d at 115 (O’Connor, J., concurring).]”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Miller v. Johnson · Agre v. Wolf“(1) intentional discrimination against an identifiable political group; (2) an actual discriminating effect on that group; and (3) a “history of disproportionate results appearing] in conjunction with strong indicia of lack of political power and the denial of fair representation.””
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.