Bonner v. City of Prichard’s Empirical Analysis
661 F.2d 1206 · 1981
Citation profile
4,591 federal appellate · 7 district · 19 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 9,164 later decisions (10 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Florida v. Royer (1983), Hope v. Pelzer (2002)
4,591 federal appellate · 7 district · 19 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.
Appellate journey
Relationships
Relies on Wolff v. McDonnell · Bounds v. Smith · Price v. Johnston · Johnson v. Avery
Cited together with Stein v. Reynolds Securities, Inc. · Glasser v. United States · Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Strickland v. Washington · Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H
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 9,164 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(T)he decisions of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (the 'former Fifth' or the 'old Fifth' as that court existed on September 30, 1981) handed down by that court prior to the close of business on that date, (are) binding as precedent in the Eleventh Circuit ....”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage“a prior decision of the circuit (panel or en banc) [can] not be overturned by a panel but only by the court sitting en banc.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage“Prisoners have a constitutional right to 'adequate, effective and meaningful' access to the courts.”
3 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.