Schmidt v. Bishop’s Empirical Analysis
1991
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 9 district · 45 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 71 later decisions — most recently June 2018 · most notably S.V. v. R.V. (1996), Gibson v. Brewer (1997)
6 federal appellate · 9 district · 45 state decisions — followed in 24 states
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
Relies on Cantwell v. State of Connecticut · Lemon v. Kurtzman · Meinhard v. Salmon · Watson v. Jones · Baltimore City Department of Social Services v. Bouknight
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 71 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"[a]ny inquiry into the policies and practices of the church ... in hiring or supervising their clergy raises . . . First Amendment problems of entanglement . . . which might involve the court in making sensitive judgments about the propriety of the church [’s] . . . supervision in light of their religious beliefs.. .. It would therefore ... be inappropriate and unconstitutional for this Court to determine after the fact that the ecclesiastical authorities negligently supervised or retained the defendant Bishop. Any award of damages would have a chilling effect leading indirectly to state control over the future conduct of affairs of a religious denomination, a result violative of the text and history of the establishment clause."”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“would require the Court and the jury to consider the fundamental perspective and approach to counseling inherent in the beliefs and practices of that denomination. This is as unconstitutional as it is impossible. It fosters excessive entanglement with religion.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[I]n analyzing and defining the scope of a fiduciary duty owed persons by their clergy, the Court would be confronted by the same constitutional difficulties encountered in articulating the generalized standard of care for a clergyman required by the law of negligence. ... [A]s with her negligence claim, [the plaintiffs] fiduciary duty claim is merely another way of alleging that'the defendant grossly abused his pastoral role, that is, that he engaged in malpractice.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.