Johnson v. Fankell’s Empirical Analysis
1997
Citation profile
158 federal appellate · 37 district · 137 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 466 later decisions (7 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Schriro Director Arizona Department of Corrections v. Summerlin (2004), Johnson v. United States (2010)
158 federal appellate · 37 district · 137 state decisions — followed in 28 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.
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1291 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics · Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp. · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay
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 466 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Neither this Court nor any other federal tribunal has any authority to place a construction on a state statute different from the one rendered by the highest court of the State.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'permit the resolution of many insubstantial claims on summary judgment.'”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Francisco · Francisco v. Long
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.