Ewing v. California’s Empirical Analysis
2003
Citation profile
361 federal appellate · 37 district · 573 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,734 later decisions (10 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2026 · most notably Miller v. Alabama (2012), Graham v. Florida (2010)
361 federal appellate · 37 district · 573 state decisions — followed in 41 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
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Almendarez-Torres v. United States · Kyles v. Whitley · Arizona v. Fulminante · Solem v. Helm
Cited together with Harmelin v. Michigan · Solem v. Helm · Lockyer Attorney General of California v. Andrade · Rummel v. Estelle · Hutto v. Davis
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 1,734 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“designed to increase the prison terms of repeat felons.”
62 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[r]ecidivism has long been recognized as a legitimate basis for increased punishment.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“a threshold comparison of the crime committed and the sentence imposed leads to an inference of gross disproportionality.”
4 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.