Rapanos v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
2006
Citation profile
184 federal appellate · 92 district · 47 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 610 later decisions (27 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably Kucana v. Holder (2010), Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006)
184 federal appellate · 92 district · 47 state decisions — followed in 12 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
reviewedUnited States v. Rapanos (from Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 33 U.S.C. § 1251 (Alternative Water Sources Act of 2000) · 33 U.S.C. § 1288 · 33 U.S.C. § 1311 · 33 U.S.C. § 1344 · 33 U.S.C. § 1362 · 5 U.S.C. § 706
Relies on Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. · Immigration & Naturalization Service v. Ventura · Pullman-Standard v. Swint · Screws v. United States · Marks v. United States
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 610 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“if the wetlands, either alone or in combination with similarly situated lands in the region, significantly affect the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of other covered waters more readily understood as”
15 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“add[ed] ... any pollutant to navigable waters from any point source.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent““[a]ll interstate 1 waters including interstate wetlands,” [33 ' C.F.R.] ■ § 328.3(a)(2); “[a]ll other waters such as intrastate lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, or natural ponds, the use, degradation or de-struction of. which could affect- interstate • or foreign commerce,” [id.] § 328.3(a)(3); •“tributaries' of [such] waters,” [id.] § 328.3(a)(5); and “[wjetlands adjacent to [such] waters [and tributaries] (other than waters that are themselves wetlands),” • [id] § 328.3(a)(7). The regulation defines “adjacent”- wetlands as those - “bordering, contiguous [to], or neighboring” waters - of the United States. [Id] § 328.3(c). It specifically •provides ' that “[w]etlands separated from other waters of the United States by man-made dikes or barriers, natural river berms, beach dunes and the- like are ‘adjacent wetlands.’ ” [Id.]”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.