Ramos v. Lamm’s Empirical Analysis
639 F.2d 559 · 1980
Citation profile
278 federal appellate · 90 district · 31 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 663 later decisions (6 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Farmer v. Brennan (1994), Wilson v. Seiter (1991)
278 federal appellate · 90 district · 31 state decisions — followed in 19 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.
Relationships
Relies on United States v. United States Gypsum Co. · Estelle v. Gamble · Younger v. Harris · Bell v. Wolfish · Colorado River Water Conservation District v. United States
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 663 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A medical need is serious if it is 'one that has been diagnosed by a physician as mandating treatment or one that is so obvious that even a lay person would easily recognize the necessity for a doctor's attention.'”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Simkus v. Granger · Price v. Carey“proving there are such systemic and gross deficiencies in staffing, facilities, equipment, or procedures that the inmate population is effectively denied access to adequate medical care.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“deliberate indifference to serious medical needs of prisoners”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.