Smith v. Bernier’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 6 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently August 2014
2 federal appellate · 6 district · 1 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 23 U.S.C. § 101 (America Fast Forward Financing Innovation Act of 2012) · 23 U.S.C. § 401 (Drunk Driving Prevention Act of 1988) · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman · Kentucky v. Graham · Daniels v. Williams · Cort v. Ash · Rochin v. People of California
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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““many of the case[s] permitting recovery on a substantive due process ground for personal injury or death involve a person in state custody or under the state’s control. Such persons are clearly subject to abuses of the government’s significant power over them. By contrast, where a member of the public is harmed as a result of a governmental official’s failure to act, a constitutional violation is not generally found ... unless the government conduct is ‘sufficiently severe, sufficiently disproportionate to the need presented and so deliberate and unjustified a use of [authority] as to transcend the bounds of ordinary tort law and establish a deprivation of constitutional rights.’ ””
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.