Burns v. Reed’s Empirical Analysis
1991
Citation profile
726 federal appellate · 331 district · 243 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,507 later decisions (35 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2025 · most notably Albright v. Oliver (1994), Hafer v. Melo (1991)
726 federal appellate · 331 district · 243 state decisions — followed in 36 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
reviewedBurns v. Reed (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Scheuer v. Rhodes · Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics · Anderson v. Creighton · Mitchell v. Forsyth
Cited together with Imbler v. Pachtman · Buckley v. Fitzsimmons · Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Forrester v. White · Butz v. Economou
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 2,507 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he presumption is that qualified rather than absolute immunity is sufficient to protect government officials in the exercise of their duties.”
104 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process.”
42 later decisions quote this exact passage“the nature of the function performed, not the identity of the actor who performed it.”
29 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.