Morrison v. Olson’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
464 federal appellate · 176 district · 156 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,402 later decisions (93 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Mistretta v. United States (1989), Granfinanciera, S.A. v. Nordberg (1989)
464 federal appellate · 176 district · 156 state decisions — followed in 30 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
reviewedIn re Olson (from District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 10 U.S.C. § 867 · 15 U.S.C. § 2053 · 15 U.S.C. § 2061 · 15 U.S.C. § 41 (§ 1 of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914) · 15 U.S.C. § 45 (§ 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914) · 18 U.S.C. § 1505 · 18 U.S.C. § 2516 (Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986) · 18 U.S.C. § 3006A (Criminal Justice Act)
Relies on Baker v. Carr · Buckley v. Valeo · Northern Pipeline Construction Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co. · United States v. Nixon · Heckler v. Chaney
Cited together with Buckley v. Valeo · Mistretta v. United States · Bowsher v. Synar · Immigration & Naturalization Service v. Chadha · Humphrey's Ex'r v. United States
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 1,402 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“whose work is directed and supervised at some level by others who were appointed by Presidential nomination with the advice and consent of the Senate.”
76 later decisions quote this exact passage“Time and again we have reaffirmed the importance in our constitutional scheme of the separation of governmental powers into the three coordinate branches.”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“comes before the [cjourt clad, so to speak, in sheep’s clothing: [where] the potential of the asserted principle to effect important change in the equilibrium of power is not immediately evident, and must be discerned by a careful and perceptive analysis.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.