Collins v. City of Harker Heights’s Empirical Analysis
1992
Citation profile
1,160 federal appellate · 760 district · 478 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4,789 later decisions (36 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Farmer v. Brennan (1994), County of Sacramento v. Lewis (1998)
1,160 federal appellate · 760 district · 478 state decisions — followed in 40 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
reviewedCollins v. City of Harker Heights (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York · Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth · Estelle v. Gamble · Bell v. Wolfish · Parratt v. Taylor
Cited together with County of Sacramento v. Lewis · Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York · Joshua Deshaney, a Minor, by His Guardian Ad Litem, and Melody Deshaney,s v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, et al. · Daniels v. Williams · Harlow v. Fitzgerald
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 4,789 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“reluctant to expand the concept of substantive due process because guideposts for responsible decisionmaking in this unchartered area are scarce and open-ended.”
96 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[t]he doctrine of judicial self-restraint requires us to exercise the utmost care whenever we are asked to break new ground in this field.”
65 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“does not purport to supplant traditional tort law in laying down rules of conduct to regulate liability for injuries that attend living together in society,”
49 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.