Brown v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
4 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently January 2003
4 district ·
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 18 U.S.C. § 5003 · 28 U.S.C. § 1331
Relies on Bounds v. Smith · Olim v. Wakinekona · Howe v. Smith · Commonwealth v. Brown · Kivela v. United States Attorney General
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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The law seems clear ... that when a transfer occurs from state custody into a federal institution located in another state the transferring state is responsible for providing an adequate law library or adequate aid from persons trained in the law of the transferring state____ Basically the cases establish that the federal authorities are not responsible for providing state legal materials in federal penal institutions. The arrangement under which state prisoners are transferred into federal facilities is a contractual one____ The role of the Attorney General ... is to enter into transfer contracts with appropriate state officials after the Director certifies that “proper and adequate treatment facilities and personnel are available.”... Under the circumstances, no legal support exists for plaintiffs contention that the Attorney General or his “John Doe Subordinates” could be liable for any purported lack of Massachusetts legal materials at federal institutions or for the denial of access to the courts flowing therefrom.”
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.