Dalton v. Specter’s Empirical Analysis
1994
Citation profile
97 federal appellate · 91 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 371 later decisions (7 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Bennett v. Spear (1997), Clinton v. City of New York (1998)
97 federal appellate · 91 district · 4 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
reviewedthe decision below (from Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 10 U.S.C. § 2687 (Defense Authorization Amendments) · 42 U.S.C. § 4321 (§ 2 of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969) · 5 U.S.C. § 701 · 5 U.S.C. § 704
Relies on Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics · William Marbury v. James Madison · Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Commerce Corp. · Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer · Dugan v. Rank
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 371 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“was premised on the observation that the report carried no direct consequences and served more like a tentative recommendation than a final and binding determination. And in the latter case [ Dalton ], the agency action in question was submission to the President of base closure recommendations by the Secretary of Defense and the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission; our holding that this was not”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[o]ur cases do not support the proposition that every action by the President, or by another executive official, in excess of his statutory authority is ipso facto in violation of the Constitution.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“assume[d] for the sake of argument that some claims that the President has violated a statutory mandate are judicially reviewable outside the framework of the APA,”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.