Gilles v. Repicky’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 federal appellate · 7 district ·

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 66 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “whether (1) it was defined with reasonable clarity, (2) the Supreme Court or the Second Circuit has confirmed the existence of the right, and (3) a reasonable defendant would have understood that his conduct was unlawful. The question is not what a lawyer would learn or intuit from researching case law, but what a reasonable person in the defendant’s position should know about the constitutionality of the conduct. Moreover, when faced with a qualified immunity defense, a court should consider the specific scope and nature of a defendant’s qualified immunity claim. That is, a determination of whether the right at issue was clearly established must be undertaken in light of the specific context of the case, not as a broad general proposition. Thus, the qualified immunity analysis must be particularized in the sense that the contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. This is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful; but it is to say that in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Children First Foundation, Inc. v. Martinez

2. “A police officer is entitled to qualified immunity if (1) his conduct does not violate a clearly established constitutional right, or (2) it was “objectively reasonable” for the officer to believe his conduct did not violate a clearly established constitutional right. Thus, a defendant is entitled to summary judgment if [he] “adduee[s] sufficient facts [such] that no reasonable jury, looking at the evidence in the light most favorable to, and drawing all inferences most favorable to, the plaintiffs, could conclude that it was objectively unreasonable for the defendant ]” to believe that he was acting in a fashion that did not clearly violate an established federally protected right.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Rogers v. Apicella

3. “[W]hen a defendant official invokes qualified immunity as a defense in order to support a motion for summary judgment, a court must consider two questions: (1) whether the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, makes out a violation of a statutory or constitutional right, and (2) whether that right was clearly established at the time of the alleged violation.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Children First Foundation, Inc. v. Martinez