Pfeiffer v. Central Intelligence Agency’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 7 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently March 2019
2 federal appellate · 7 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 50 U.S.C. § 403 (§ 102 of the National Security Act of 1947) · 50 U.S.C. § 403G (Servicemembers Civil Relief Act) · 5 U.S.C. § 552 (Freedom of Information Act)
Relies on Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corporation · National Labor Relations Board v. Sears, Roebuck & Co. · Harris v. McRae · Central Intelligence Agency v. Sims
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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We are unpersuaded that the Internal Investigation Report that plaintiff seeks to have disclosed is a “final” agency history, nor are we convinced that plaintiff had authority to unclassify the material. The subjective views of a staff member that the decision-making process is complete and “final” when he submits his recommendation to a superi- or is of no consequence.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“must give considerable deference to the agency's explanation of its decisional process, due to the agency's expertise in determining 'what confidentiality is needed to prevent injury to the quality of agency decisions.'”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“specifically exempted from disclosure by statute[.]”
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.