Amadeo v. Zant’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
361 federal appellate · 6 district · 44 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 741 later decisions (13 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2025 · most notably McCleskey v. Zant (1991), Banks v. Dretke Director Texas Department of Criminal Justice Correctional Institutions Division (2004)
361 federal appellate · 6 district · 44 state decisions
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
reviewedAmadeo v. Kemp (from Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Anderson v. City of Bessemer City · Wainwright v. Sykes · Murray v. Carrier · Swain v. State of Alabama · Inwood Laboratories, Inc. v. Ives Laboratories, 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 741 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the existence of cause for a procedural default must ordinarily turn on whether the prisoner can show that some objective factor external to the defense impeded counsel's efforts to comply with the State's procedural rule.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“clearly-erroneous standard of review is a deferential one”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Eggers v. Alabama · In re Kesler“A showing that the factual or legal basis for a claim was not reasonably available to counsel or that some interference by officials made compliance impracticable, constitutes cause.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.