Cunningham v. Jones’s Empirical Analysis
567 F.2d 653 · 1977
Citation profile
23 federal appellate · 1 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 54 later decisions — most recently January 2020 · most notably Thaddeus-X v. Blatter (1999), Samuel Lemaire v. Manfred Maass, Superintendent, Samuel Lemaire v. Manfred Maass, Superintendent (1993)
23 federal appellate · 1 district · 1 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.
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Estelle v. Gamble · Gregg v. Georgia · Trop v. Dulles · Weems v. United States · Kemmler
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 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he pains of hunger constitute a dull, prolonged sort of corporal punishment. That marked physical effects ensue is evident from the numerous instances of substantial weight loss during solitary confinement. * # # * * * The practice [of imposing a bread and water diet] is therefore both generally disapproved and obsolescent even within this penal system. It is not seriously defended as essential to security. It amounts therefore to an unnecessary infliction of pain. Furthermore, as a technique designed to break a man’s spirit not just by denial of physical comforts but of necessities, to the end that his powers of resistance diminish, the bread and water diet is inconsistent with current minimum standards of respect for human dignity. The Court has no difficulty in determining that it is a violation of the eighth amendment.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Ruiz v. Estelle“deliberate and unnecessary withholding of food essential to normal health can violate the Eighth Amendment”
1 later decision 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.