Bowen v. Watkins’s Empirical Analysis
669 F.2d 979 · 1982
Citation profile
87 federal appellate · 8 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 145 later decisions — most recently December 2020 · most notably Spell v. McDaniel (1987), Doe v. Taylor Independent School District (1994)
87 federal appellate · 8 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 Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York · United States v. United States Gypsum Co. · Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle · Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois · Rizzo v. Goode
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 145 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] failure to supervise gives rise to section 1983 liability only in those situations in which there is a history of widespread abuse. The knowledge may be imputed to the supervisory official, and he can be found to have caused the later violations by his failure to prevent it.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[i]f a higher level official has the power to overrule a decision but as a practical matter never does so, the decisionmaker may represent the effective final authority on the question”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The opinion in Mt. Healthy clearly contemplates that a decision may be the product of more than one substantial factor; it refers to “a substantial factor”, 429 U.S. at 287 , 97 S.Ct. at 576 (emphasis added). Moreover, the second step of the analysis — determining whether the same decision would have been reached absent the impermissible factor — suggests that if the defendant prevails at that point, even though the impermissible factor was substantial, other factors were also substantial in reaching the decision. Consequently, even if budgetary considerations were a substantial factor — and there is no finding to that effect — we remain convinced that the unrest was also a substantial factor in the decision of the Chief of Police. 669 F.2d at 984 .”
1 later decision 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.