Bowsher v. Synar’s Empirical Analysis
1986
Citation profile
401 federal appellate · 224 district · 152 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,324 later decisions (104 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably United States v. Lopez (1995), Mistretta v. United States (1989)
401 federal appellate · 224 district · 152 state decisions — followed in 30 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 District of Columbia District Court)
Relationships
Relies on Buckley v. Valeo · Northern Pipeline Construction Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co. · Cannon v. University of Chicago · Yakus v. United States · Fidelity Federal Savings and Loan Association v. D Cuesta
Cited together with Immigration & Naturalization Service v. Chadha · Buckley v. Valeo · Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer · Mistretta v. United States · Morrison v. Olson
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 1,324 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“for the most compelling constitutional reasons.”
53 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“To permit an officer controlled by Congress to execute the laws would be, in essence, to permit a congressional veto. Congress could simply remove, or threaten to remove, an officer for executing the laws in any fashion found to be unsatisfactory to Congress. This kind of congressional control over the execution of the laws ... is constitutionally impermissible.”
35 later decisions quote this exact passage“[t]he structure of the Constitution does not permit Congress to execute the laws; it follows that Congress cannot grant to an officer under its control what it does not possess.”
14 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.