Irving v. Dormire’s Empirical Analysis
519 F.3d 441 · 2008
Citation profile
19 federal appellate · 3 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions — most recently April 2025 · most notably Cook v. City of Bella Villa (2009), Nelson v. Shuffman (2010)
19 federal appellate · 3 district · 1 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.
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Farmer v. Brennan · Carey v. Piphus · Duncan v. Walker · SAUCIER v. KATZ Et Al.
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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The law of excessive force in this country is that a prisoner cannot be subjected to gratuitous or disproportionate force that has no object but to inflict pain. This is so whether the prisoner is in a cell, prison yard, police car, in handcuffs on the side of the road, or in any other custodial setting. The use of force must stop when the need for it to maintain or restore discipline no longer exists. Long before the defendants acted, the law was clearly established that correctional officers could not use force maliciously or sadistically for the very purpose of causing harm.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Thompson v. Virginia
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.