Lee v. Weisman’s Empirical Analysis
1992
Citation profile
623 federal appellate · 182 district · 112 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,609 later decisions (50 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Agostini v. Felton Chancellor Board of Education of the City of New York (1997), Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of University of Virginia (1995)
623 federal appellate · 182 district · 112 state decisions — followed in 20 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
reviewedWeisman v. Lee (from First Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Buckley v. Valeo · Cantwell v. State of Connecticut · Lemon v. Kurtzman · Sherbert v. Verner · Pierce v. Society of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary Same
Cited together with Lemon v. Kurtzman · County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union · Lynch v. Donnelly · School District of Abington Township Pennsylvania v. Schempp J Murray III · Wallace v. Jaffree
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 1,609 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]here are heightened concerns with protecting freedom of conscience from subtle coercive pressure in the elementary and secondary public schools.”
183 later decisions quote this exact passage“Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The Court today demonstrates the irrelevance of Lemon by essentially ignoring it, and the interment of that case may be the one happy byproduct of the Court's otherwise lamentable decision.”
6 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.