Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain’s Empirical Analysis
2004
Citation profile
606 federal appellate · 252 district · 62 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,696 later decisions (47 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Jama v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (2005), Carpenter v. United States (2018)
606 federal appellate · 252 district · 62 state decisions — followed in 13 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
reviewedAlvarez-Machain v. United States (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 1091 (Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1987) · 21 U.S.C. § 878 (§ 508 of the Controlled Substances Act) · 28 U.S.C. § 1331 · 28 U.S.C. § 1346 (Federal Tort Claims Act) · 28 U.S.C. § 1350 (Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991) · 28 U.S.C. § 1602 (§ 4 of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976) · 28 U.S.C. § 2674 · 28 U.S.C. § 2680
Relies on Erie Co v. Tompkins · Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics · Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills of Ala. · Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Enrico St Cyr · Feres v. United States
Cited together with Ashcroft v. Iqbal · Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly · Baker v. Carr · Republic of Austria v. Altmann · The Paquete Habana
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 1,696 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination.”
44 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“based on the present-day law of nations to rest on a norm of international character accepted by the civilized world and defined with a specificity comparable to the features of the 18th century paradigms we have recognized.”
33 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.”
20 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.