Bowers v. Hardwick’s Empirical Analysis
1986
Citation profile
437 federal appellate · 112 district · 478 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,746 later decisions (40 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. P Casey P Casey (1992), Reno v. Flores (1993)
437 federal appellate · 112 district · 478 state decisions — followed in 47 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. A case is still cited after being overruled — to note the reversal, distinguish it, or in dissent. 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
reviewedHardwick v. Bowers (from Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Conley v. Gibson · Katz v. United States · Edelman v. Jordan · Payton v. New York · Roe v. Wade
Cited together with Griswold v. State of Connecticut · City of Cleburne Texas v. Cleburne Living Center · Lawrence v. Texas · Roe v. Wade · Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia
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 1,746 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“implicit in the concept of ordered liberty”
25 later decisions quote this exact passage“The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution.”
23 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“neither liberty nor justice would exist if [they] were sacrificed.”
16 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.