Grace v. Burger’s Empirical Analysis
763 F.2d 457 · 1985
Citation profile
16 federal appellate · 3 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 40 later decisions — most recently July 2014 · most notably United States v. Yoffe (1985), League of Women Voters of California v. Federal Communications Commission (1986)
16 federal appellate · 3 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 28 U.S.C. § 1920 · 28 U.S.C. § 2412 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1988
Relies on Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co. · Hall v. Cole · United States v. Grace · Cox v. State of Louisiana · Spencer v. National Labor Relations Board
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 40 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he defendant, United States, is more than just a representative of all the beneficiaries of the litigation. An award of attorney fees would ultimately be born[e] by all taxpayers, rather than just those benefiting from the injunctive order. As such, ... the common benefit theory is inapplicable in cases such as this where plaintiffs seek injunctive relief against the government .... The common benefit theory is designed to avoid unjust enrichment of beneficiaries to a law suit who are not named plaintiffs. An award of fees here would not compel the beneficiaries to compensate the winning litigant who acted as their representative, but would assess costs against the unrelated losing party. This, clearly, is inconsistent with the American rule and the common benefit exception.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“position of the United States was substantially justified,”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Id. Thus, the court simply stated its expectation that it would be rare that Congress would enact a statute so clearly unconstitutional that an agency would not be substantially justified in defending it. Indeed, in the main text of the opinion, the court explicitly stated: 57 [W]e do not rule, nor did the district court, that the government is forever and always”
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.