Miller v. Bell’s Empirical Analysis
661 F.2d 623 · 1981
Citation profile
52 federal appellate · 14 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 95 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2018 · most notably United States Department of Justice v. Landano (1993), Keys v. United States Department of Justice (1987)
52 federal appellate · 14 district · 2 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 Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp. · National Labor Relations Board v. Sears, Roebuck & Co. · Department of the Air Force v. Rose · Environmental Protection Agency v. Mink · Thompson 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 95 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“promises of confidentiality [are] 'inherently implicit'”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(b) This section does not apply to matters that are— (3) specifically exempted from disclosure by statute ... provided that such statute (A) requires that the matters be withheld from the public in such a manner as to leave no discretion on the issue, or (B) establishes particular criteria for withholding or refers to particular types of matters to be withheld; (5) inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency; (6) personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy; (7) investigatory records compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of such records would ... (C) constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, (D) disclose the identity of a confidential source and, in the case of a record compiled by a criminal law enforcement authority in the course of a criminal investigation ... confidential information furnished only by the confidential source.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“As to the first of the asserted public interests, that Miller would use the information to serve as a watchdog over the adequacy and completeness of an FBI investigation, we are absolutely unpersuaded by the reasoning of the trial court. As a preliminary matter, we note that this justification would apparently apply to every FBI criminal investigation, severely vitiating the privacy and confidentiality provisions of exemptions 7(C) and (D). We further find the record demonstrates that this is not a case of sufficient public importance to warrant such a probe of the FBI’s efficiency. The plaintiffs broad unsupported hints of a government coverup or undercover surveillance fly in the face of the substance of the disclosed documents which reveal this case as one of consequence to only one individual. There is no allegation of wrongdoing by high-ranking government officials or indeed by any FBI personnel to support any public interest in any further probe into the thoroughness of the instant investigation. In the absence of such a showing of special public interest in testing the thoroughness of an investigation, we find it of little weight.”
3 later decisions 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.