Holmes v. South Carolina’s Empirical Analysis
2006
Citation profile
305 federal appellate · 47 district · 609 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,399 later decisions (6 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably 39 Cal. 4th 970 - People v. Lewis (2006), 229 Ill. 2d 56 - People v. Beaman (2008)
305 federal appellate · 47 district · 609 state decisions — followed in 42 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
reviewedthe decision below (from Supreme Court of South Carolina)
Relationships
Relies on Delaware v. Van Arsdall · Chambers v. Mississippi · Washington v. Texas · California v. Trombetta · Rock v. Arkansas
Cited together with Crane v. Kentucky · Chambers v. Mississippi · United States v. Scheffer · Williams v. Taylor · Rock v. Arkansas
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 1,399 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“While the Constitution thus prohibits the exclusion of defense evidence under rules that serve no legitimate purpose or that are disproportionate to the ends that they are asserted to promote, well-established rules of evidence permit trial judges to exclude evidence if its probative value is outweighed by certain other factors such as unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or potential to mislead the jury.”
31 later decisions quote this exact passage“Whether rooted directly in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or in the Compulsory Process or Confrontation Clauses of the Sixth Amendment, the Constitution guarantees criminal defendants a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Kubsch v. Neal · Kubsch v. Neal“a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense”
13 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.