Dennis v. Higgins’s Empirical Analysis
1991
Citation profile
231 federal appellate · 111 district · 128 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 817 later decisions (33 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Heck v. Humphrey (1994), Bennett v. Spear (1997)
231 federal appellate · 111 district · 128 state decisions — followed in 22 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
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1341 · 28 U.S.C. § 1343 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1988
Relies on Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York · Monroe v. Pape · Cort v. Ash · Hines v. Davidowitz · Vandygriff v. Phillips
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 817 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State ... subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States ... to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.”
13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“a substantive restriction on permissible state regulation of interstate commerce.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage“[t]o regulate Commerce ... among the several States.”
7 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.