Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
1995
Citation profile
553 federal appellate · 187 district · 248 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,661 later decisions (64 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably United States v. Lopez (1995), Gonzalez v. Crosby (2005)
553 federal appellate · 187 district · 248 state decisions — followed in 37 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
reviewedPlaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc. (from Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 15 U.S.C. § 78A (§ 1 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934) · 15 U.S.C. § 78J (§ 10 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934) · 20 U.S.C. § 1411 · 20 U.S.C. § 1415 · 28 U.S.C. § 1652 (Rules of Decision Act) · 28 U.S.C. § 1655 · 28 U.S.C. § 2101 · 28 U.S.C. § 2107
Relies on Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill · Brecht v. Abrahamson · Landgraf v. USI Film Products · United States v. Nixon · Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority
Cited together with Landgraf v. USI Film Products · Robertson v. Seattle Audubon Society · United States v. Klein · Lampf, Pleva, Lipkind, Prupis & Petigrow v. Gilbertson · Mistretta v. United States
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 1,661 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he proposition that legal defenses based upon doctrines central to the courts’ structural independence can never be waived simply does not accord with our cases. Certainly one such doctrine consists of the “judicial Power” to disregard an unconstitutional statute; yet none would suggest that a litigant may never waive the defense that a statute is unconstitutional.... We held in Schor that, although a litigant had consented to bring a state-law counterclaim before an Article I tribunal, we would nonetheless choose to consider his Article III challenge, because “when these Article III limitations are at issue, notions of consent and waiver cannot be dispositive,” id., at 851, 106 S.Ct. 3245 (emphasis added). See also Freytag v. Commissioner, 501 U.S. 868 , 878-879, 111 S.Ct. 2631 , 115 L.Ed.2d 764 (1991) (finding a “rare cas[e] in which we should exercise our discretion” to hear a waived claim based on the Appointments Clause, Art. II, § 2, cl. 2).”
51 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“When a new law makes clear that it is retroactive, an appellate court must apply that law in reviewing judgments still on appeal that were rendered before the law was enacted, and must alter the outcome accordingly.”
45 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“The record of history shows that the Framers crafted this charter of the judicial department with an expressed understanding that it gives the Federal Judiciary the power, not merely to rule on cases, but to decide them, subject to review only by superior courts in the Article III hierarchy — with an understanding, in short, that “a judgment conclusively resolves the case” because “a ‘Judicial Power’ is one to render dispositive judgments.””
27 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.