Lincoln v. Vigil’s Empirical Analysis
1993
Citation profile
314 federal appellate · 153 district · 9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 819 later decisions (18 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc. (2007), Cherokee Nation of Okla. v. Leavitt (2005)
314 federal appellate · 153 district · 9 state decisions
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
reviewedVigil v. Rhoades (from Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Citizens to Preserve Overton Park, Inc. v. Volpe · Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner · Heckler v. Chaney · Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill · Chrysler Corporation v. Brown
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 819 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“is drawn so that a court would have no meaningful standard against which to judge the agency's exercise of discretion.”
25 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The allocation of funds from a lump-sum appropriation is another administrative decision traditionally regarded as committed to agency discretion.”
18 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[A]n agency’s allocation of funds from a lump-sum appropriation requires a com plicated balancing of a number of factors which are peculiarly within its expertise: whether its resources are best spent on one program or another; whether it is likely to succeed in fulfilling its statutory mandate; whether a particular program best fits the agency’s overall policies; and, indeed whether the agency has enough resources to fund a program at all.”
11 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.