Lowenfield v. Phelps’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
585 federal appellate · 66 district · 797 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,103 later decisions (41 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2024 · most notably Williams v. Taylor (2000), Lockhart v. Fretwell (1993)
585 federal appellate · 66 district · 797 state decisions — followed in 41 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
reviewedLowenfield v. Phelps (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Gregg v. Georgia · Witherspoon v. Illinois · Furman v. Georgia · Lockett v. Ohio · Wainwright v. Witt
Cited together with Strickland v. Washington · Zant v. Stephens · Gregg v. Georgia · Allen v. United States · Lockett v. Ohio
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 2,103 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“genuinely narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty and must reasonably justify the imposition of a more severe sentence on the defendant compared to others found guilty of murder.”
159 later decisions quote this exact passage“especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“All of the Federal Courts of Appeals have upheld some form of a supplemental jury charge.”
2 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.