Lafler v. Cooper’s Empirical Analysis
566 U.S. 156 · 2012
Citation profile
36 federal appellate · 16 district · 208 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 401 later decisions (5 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Jae Lee v. United States (2017), 133 S. Ct. 1103 - Chaidez v. United States (2013)
36 federal appellate · 16 district · 208 state decisions — followed in 34 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 Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Williams v. Taylor · United States v. Wade · Hill v. Lockhart · McMann v. Richardson
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 401 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[C]riminal justice today is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“a defendant must show that but for the ineffective advice of counsel there is a reasonable probability that the plea offer would have been presented to the court (i.e., that the defendant would have accepted the plea and the prosecution would not have withdrawn it in light of intervening circumstances), that the [trial] court would have accepted its terms, and that the conviction or sentence, or both, under the offer’s terms would have been less severe than under the judgment and sentence that in fact were imposed.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[E]vidence is material only if there is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different.”
3 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.