Alvarez v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
2009
Citation profile
78 federal appellate · 26 district · 22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 317 later decisions (23 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Turner v. Rogers (2011), Camreta v. Greene Ex Rel. S. G. (2011)
78 federal appellate · 26 district · 22 state decisions
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
reviewedSmith v. City of Chicago (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2106 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on City of Los Angeles v. Lyons · Aetna Life Ins Co of Hartford Conn v. Haworth · Steffel v. Thompson · United States v. Munsingwear, Inc. · Southern Pacific Terminal Company v. Interstate Commerce Commission
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 317 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“dispute is no longer embedded in any actual controversy about the plaintiffs' particular legal rights,”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“actual controversy must be extant at all stages of review.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“a dispute solely about the meaning of a law, abstracted from any concrete actual or threatened harm, falls outside the scope of the constitutional words 'Cases' and 'Controversies.'”
2 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.