Edwards v. Aguillard’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
618 federal appellate · 154 district · 97 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,602 later decisions (51 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Agostini v. Felton Chancellor Board of Education of the City of New York (1997), Kansas v. Hendricks (1997)
618 federal appellate · 154 district · 97 state decisions — followed in 20 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 Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H · Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. · Pierson v. Ray · United States v. O'Brien · McGowan v. State of Maryland Gallagher
Cited together with Lemon v. Kurtzman · Lynch v. Donnelly · Wallace v. Jaffree · County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union · School District of Abington Township Pennsylvania v. Schempp J Murray III
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 1,602 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The Court has been particularly vigilant in monitoring compliance with the Establishment Clause in elementary and secondary schools.”
48 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“While the Court is normally deferential to a State's articulation of a secular purpose, it is required that the statement of such purpose be sincere and not a sham.”
21 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“The purpose prong of the Lemon test asks whether government's actual purpose is to endorse or disapprove of religion.”
21 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.