Crawford-El v. Britton’s Empirical Analysis
1998
Citation profile
580 federal appellate · 675 district · 89 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,543 later decisions (33 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly (2007), Hartman v. Moore (2006)
580 federal appellate · 675 district · 89 state decisions — followed in 22 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
reviewedCrawford-El v. Britton (from District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Scheuer v. Rhodes · Anderson v. Creighton · Mitchell v. Forsyth
Cited together with Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Anderson v. Creighton · Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H
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 2,543 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“When a plaintiff files a complaint against a public official alleging a claim that requires proof of wrongful motive, the trial court must exercise its discretion in a way that protects the substance of the qualified immunity defense. It must exercise its discretion so that officials are not subjected to unnecessary and burdensome discovery or trial proceedings.”
37 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[A] defense of qualified immunity may not be rebutted by evidence that the defendant's conduct was malicious or otherwise improperly motivated. Evidence concerning the defendant's subjective intent is simply irrelevant to that defense.”
25 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“must `identify affirmative evidence from which a jury could find that the plaintiff has carried his or her burden of proving the pertinent motive.'”
24 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.