Johnson v. Phelan’s Empirical Analysis
69 F.3d 144 · 1995
Citation profile
56 federal appellate · 7 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 110 later decisions — most recently December 2023 · most notably Norman Charles Oliver v. Wayne Scott, et al. (2002), Sanchez v. Pereira-Castillo (2009)
56 federal appellate · 7 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 Conley v. Gibson · Estelle v. Gamble · Graham v. Connor · Wolff v. McDonnell · Farmer v. Brennan
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 110 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“overcome calculated harassment unrelated to prison needs”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“entitled to watch and regulate every detail of daily life”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“There are different ways to look upon the inmates of prisons and jails in the United States in 1995. One way is to look upon them as members of a different species, indeed as a type of vermin, devoid of human dignity and entitled to no respect... I do not myself consider the 1.5 million inmates of American prisons and jails in that light... ,[W]e should have a realistic conception of the composition of the prison and jail population before deciding that they are a scum entitled to nothing better than what a vengeful populace and a resource-starved penal system choose to give them. We must not exaggerate the distance between “us,” the lawful ones, the respectable ones, and the prison and jail population; for such exaggeration will make it too easy for us to deny that population the rudiments of humane consideration.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.