Fann v. Brailey’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 state decisions

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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. This is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful, but it is to say that in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Payne v. Breuer

2. “While [Farm] had a right, in an abstract sense, to speak freely and to be free of retaliatory measures taken to chill the exercise of that right we know of no right that candidates for public office have to suppress truthful information of any sort of their past lives.... the right claimed by [Fann] was not well established — in our view did not exist — _”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Fann v. City of Fairview

3. “Government officials performing discretionary functions generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Payne v. Breuer