Wallace v. Kato’s Empirical Analysis
549 U.S. 384 · 2007
Citation profile
166 federal appellate · 85 district · 37 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 901 later decisions (12 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2025 · most notably Avagyan v. Holder (2011), Manuel v. City of Joliet (2017)
166 federal appellate · 85 district · 37 state decisions — followed in 17 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 Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996) · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1988
Relies on Younger v. Harris · Heck v. Humphrey · Allen v. McCurry · Brown v. Illinois · Wilson v. Garcia
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 901 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“detention accompanied ... by wrongful institution of legal process.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A]ccrual occurs when the plaintiff has a complete and present cause of action, ... that is, when the plaintiff can file suit and obtain relief.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the accrual date of a § 1983 cause of action is a question of federal law that is not resolved by reference to state law.”
6 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.