Shaw v. Reno’s Empirical Analysis
1993
Citation profile
329 federal appellate · 108 district · 107 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,239 later decisions (75 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2026 · most notably Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena (1995), Johnson v. De Grandy (1994)
329 federal appellate · 108 district · 107 state decisions — followed in 23 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
Relies on Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. · Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. · United States v. O'Brien · Washington v. Davis · Reynolds v. Sims
Cited together with Thornburg v. Gingles · Miller v. Johnson · Reynolds v. Sims · Bush v. Al Vera Lawson · City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co.
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 1,239 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Racial classifications with respect to voting carry particular dangers.”
92 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[t]he plaintiff’s burden is to show, either through circumstantial evidence of a district’s shape and demographics or more direct evidence going to legislative purpose, that race was the predominant factor motivating the legislature’s decision to place a significant number of voters within or without a particular district. To make this showing, a plaintiff must prove that the legislature subordinated traditional race-neutral districting principles, including but not limited to compactness, contiguity, and respect for political subdivisions or communities defined by actual shared interests, to racial considerations. Where these or other race-neutral considerations are the basis for redistricting legislation, and are not subordinated to race, a State can “defeat a claim that a district has been gerrymandered on racial lines.””
13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Miller v. Johnson · Agre v. Wolf“threaten to stigmatize individuals by reason of their membership in a racial group and to incite racial hostility.”
13 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.