Rhodes v. Stewart’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
256 federal appellate · 51 district · 70 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 633 later decisions (29 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)
256 federal appellate · 51 district · 70 state decisions — followed in 18 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
reviewedthe decision below (from Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Hensley v. Eckerhart · Hewitt v. Helms · United States v. Hollywood Motor Car Co. · Allen v. California
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 633 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the settling of some dispute which affects the behavior of the defendant towards the plaintiff.”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“will constitute relief, for purposes of § 1988, if, and only if, it affects the behavior of the defendant toward the plaintiff.”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Farrar v. Hobby · Peter v. Jax“[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.”
7 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.