Mesa v. California’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
215 federal appellate · 168 district · 9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 853 later decisions (16 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2026 · most notably Clinton v. Jones (1997), Gutierrez De Martinez v. Lamagno (1995)
215 federal appellate · 168 district · 9 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
reviewedthe decision below (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Imbler v. Pachtman · Crowell v. Benson · Louisville & Nashville Railroad v. Mottley · Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. Thompson Ex Rel. Thompson · Barr v. Matteo
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 853 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(a) A civil action or criminal prosecution commenced in a State court against any of the following may be removed by them to the district court of the United States for the district and division embracing the place wherein it is pending: (1) The United States or any agency thereof or any officer (or any person acting under that officer) of the United States or of any agency thereof, sued in an official or individual capacity for any act under color of such office or on account of any right, title or authority claimed under any Act of Congress for the apprehension or punishment of criminals or the collection of the revenue.”
26 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“a pure jurisdictional statute, seeking to do nothing more than grant district court jurisdiction over cases in which a federal officer is a defendant,”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“colorable defense arising out of [his] duty to enforce federal law,”
11 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.