Hewitt v. Helms’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
718 federal appellate · 238 district · 152 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,932 later decisions (31 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2025 · most notably Farrar v. Hobby (1992), Buckhannon Board and Care Home Incs v. West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (2001)
718 federal appellate · 238 district · 152 state decisions — followed in 27 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
reviewedHelms v. Hewitt (from Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Hewitt v. Helms · Maher v. Gagne · Hanrahan v. Hampton
Cited together with Hensley v. Eckerhart · Texas State Teachers Ass'n v. Garland Independent School District · Farrar v. Hobby · Buckhannon Board and Care Home Incs v. West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources · Maher v. Gagne
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 1,932 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[r]espect for ordinary language requires that a plaintiff receive at least some relief on the merits of his claim before he can be said to prevail.”
134 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]o qualify as a prevailing party, a civil rights plaintiff must obtain at least some relief on the merits of his claim.”
29 later decisions quote this exact passage“In any action or proceeding to enforce a provision of section[] ... 1983, ... the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party... a reasonable attorney's fee as part of the costs....”
15 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.