Williams v. Leeke’s Empirical Analysis
584 F.2d 1336 · 1978
Citation profile
38 federal appellate · 10 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 97 later decisions — most recently August 2007 · most notably Ramos v. Lamm (1980), Toussaint v. McCarthy (1986)
38 federal appellate · 10 district · 7 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
Relies on Bounds v. Smith · Cruz v. Hauck · Younger v. Gilmore · Gordon v. Leeke · Fred A. Cruz, Etc. v. W. B. (Bill) Hauck
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 97 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Simply providing a prisoner with books in his cell, if he requests them, gives the prisoner no meaningful chance to explore the legal remedies he might have.”
17 later decisions quote this exact passage“[T]he fundamental right of access to the courts requires prison authorities to assist inmates in the preparation and filing of meaningful legal papers by providing prisoners with adequate law libraries or adequate assistance from persons trained in the law.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence““We should not be understood to say that every small jail must have a law library, but misdemeanants serving sentences of up to 12 months in local jails should not be left wholly without resources to prosecute potentially valid habeas claims or claims challenging the conditions of confinement or the adequacy of medical care. The provision of a law library might be unreasonably expensive, but making available the services of a lawyer, advanced law students or even paralegals might be quite inexpensive and much more effective. We only hold that a prisoner in a city jail is entitled to reasonable access to the courts and that is not provided one serving a substantial sentence of confinement if, without other legal assistance, he has access only to a law library which is so restricted as to be unmeaningful.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.