Washington v. Harper’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
672 federal appellate · 194 district · 541 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,245 later decisions (36 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2026 · most notably Farmer v. Brennan (1994), Sandin v. Conner (1995)
672 federal appellate · 194 district · 541 state decisions — followed in 39 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.
Relationships
Relies on Mathews v. Eldridge · Morrissey v. Brewer · Wolff v. McDonnell · Bell v. Wolfish · Schmerber v. State of California
Cited together with Turner v. Safley · Riggins v. Nevada · Sell v. United States · Vitek v. Jones · Wolff v. McDonnell
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 2,245 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“applies to all circumstances in which the needs of prison administration implicate constitutional rights.”
134 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“accommodation between an inmate's liberty interest in avoiding the forced administration of antipsychotic drugs and the State's interests in providing appropriate medical treatment to reduce the danger that an inmate suffering from a serious mental disorder represents to himself or others.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“Due process has never been thought to require that the neutral and detached trier of fact be law trained or a judicial or administrative officer. Surely, this is the case as to medical decision, for neither judges nor administrative hearing officers are better qualified than psychiatrists to render psychiatric judgements.... The mode and procedure of medical diagnostic procedures is not the business of judges.”
5 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.