Preston v. Thompson’s Empirical Analysis
589 F.2d 300 · 1978
Citation profile
24 federal appellate · 3 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 59 later decisions — most recently March 2025 · most notably Walker v. Mintzes (1985), Lawrence D. Caldwell v. Harold G. Miller, Warden (1986)
24 federal appellate · 3 district · 3 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 Elrod v. Burns · Ohio Bureau of Employment Services v. Hodory · Procunier v. Martinez · Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education · National Ass'n for the Advancement of Colored People v. New York
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 59 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Suffice it to say that the problems of prisons in America are complex and intractable, and, more to the point, they are not readily susceptible of resolution by decree. Most require expertise, comprehensive planning, and the commitment of resources, all of which are peculiarly within the province of the legislative and executive branches of government. For all of these reasons, courts are ill equipped to deal with the increasingly urgent problems of prison administration and reform. Judicial recognition of that fact reflects no more than a healthy sense of realism. Moreover, where state penal institutions are involved, federal courts have a further reason for deference to the appropriate prison authorities.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Godinez v. Lane
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.