William F. Buckley, Jr. v. Franklin H. Littell’s Empirical Analysis
539 F.2d 882 · 1976
Citation profile
62 federal appellate · 13 district · 56 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 186 later decisions — most recently October 2024 · most notably Ollman v. Evans (1984), Scott v. News-Herald (1986)
62 federal appellate · 13 district · 56 state decisions — followed in 24 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 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. · Cantwell v. State of Connecticut · St. Amant v. Thompson · Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts
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 186 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“as much a matter of opinion or idea as is the question what constitutes 'fascism' or the 'radical right.' " Id. at 895. Thus, the statement could not support a libel action. 29 Turning to the statement that "[l]ike Westbrook Pegler, who lied day after day in his column about Quentin Reynolds and goaded him into a lawsuit, Buckley could be taken to court by any one of several people who had enough money to hire competent legal counsel and nothing else to do,”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“Littell must have known that when he directly compared Buckley's statements with those of a proven libeler, the clear meaning to be inferred was that he considered Buckley to be a libeler like Pegler.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“cannot be regarded as having been proved to be statements of fact, among other reasons, because of the tremendous imprecision of the meaning and usage of these terms in the realm of political debate, an imprecision which is simply echoed in the book.”
2 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.