Anderson v. Creighton’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
7,956 federal appellate · 3,097 district · 1,194 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 22,885 later decisions (104 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Graham v. Connor (1989), Pearson v. Callahan (2009)
7,956 federal appellate · 3,097 district · 1,194 state decisions — followed in 47 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
reviewedMissouri ex rel. Ward v. Fidelity & Deposit Co. (from Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co. · Scheuer v. Rhodes · Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics
Cited together with Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Malley v. Briggs · Graham v. Connor · Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc.
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 22,885 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right.”
1,743 later decisions quote this exact passage“[W]hether an official protected by qualified immunity may be held personally liable for an allegedly unlawful official action generally turns on the 'objective legal reasonableness' of the action, assessed in light of the legal rules that were 'clearly established' at the time it was taken.”
156 later decisions quote this exact passage“avoid excessive disruption of government and permit the resolution of many insubstantial claims on summary judgment.”
81 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Wyatt v. Cole · Tucker v. Callahan
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.