California v. Brown’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
333 federal appellate · 15 district · 863 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,569 later decisions (84 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2026 · most notably Penry v. Lynaugh (1989), Payne v. Tennessee (1991)
333 federal appellate · 15 district · 863 state decisions — followed in 36 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
Relies on Gregg v. Georgia · Furman v. Georgia · Lockett v. Ohio · Sandstrom v. Montana · Caldwell v. Mississippi
Cited together with Lockett v. Ohio · Eddings v. Oklahoma · Strickland v. Washington · Penry v. Lynaugh · Gregg v. Georgia
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 1,569 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“punishment should be directly related to the personal culpability of the criminal defendant,”
36 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“because of the belief, long held by this society, that defendants who commit criminal acts that are attributable to a disadvantaged background, or to emotional and mental problems, may be less culpable than defendants who have no such excuse.”
26 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“By concentrating on the noun 'sympathy,' respondent ignores the crucial fact that the jury was instructed to avoid basing its decision on mere sympathy.”
25 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.