Gonzales v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis
2006
Citation profile
336 federal appellate · 6 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 826 later decisions (6 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2025 · most notably National Ass'n of Home Builders v. Defenders of Wildlife (2007), Shi Liang Lin v. United States Department of Justice (2007)
336 federal appellate · 6 district ·
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
reviewedThomas v. Ashcroft (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 8 U.S.C. § 1101 (§ 101 of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (McCarran-Walter))
Relies on Securities and Exchange Commission v. Chenery Corporation Same · Securities and Exchange Commission v. Chenery Corporation · Immigration & Naturalization Service v. Ventura · Florida Power & Light Co. v. Lorion · Cutter et al. v. Wilkinson Director Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction
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 826 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The agency can bring its expertise to bear upon the matter; it can evaluate the evidence; it can make an initial determination; and, in doing so, it can, through informed discussion and analysis, help a court later determine whether its decision exceeds the leeway that the law provides.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[a] court of appeals is not generally empowered to conduct a de novo inquiry into the matter being reviewed and to reach its own conclusions ....”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“determin[e] the facts and decid[e] whether the facts as found fall within a statutory term.”
5 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.