Sandin v. Conner’s Empirical Analysis
1995
Citation profile
1,506 federal appellate · 596 district · 986 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 7,839 later decisions (12 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2026 · most notably Wilkinson v. Austin (2005), McKune Warden et al. v. Lile (2002)
1,506 federal appellate · 596 district · 986 state decisions — followed in 46 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
reviewedConner v. Sakai (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth · Mathews v. Eldridge · Morrissey v. Brewer · Wolff v. McDonnell · Bell v. Wolfish
Cited together with Wolff v. McDonnell · Hewitt v. Helms · Meachum v. Fano · Farmer v. Brennan · Harlow v. Fitzgerald
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 7,839 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life.”
516 later decisions quote this exact passage“any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
15 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“retain other protection from arbitrary state action ... within the expected conditions of confinement. They may invoke the First and Eighth Amendments and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment where appropriate, and may draw upon internal prison grievance procedures and state judicial review where available.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Hines v. Gomez · Cosco v. Uphoff
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.