Eng v. Coughlin’s Empirical Analysis
858 F.2d 889 · 1988
Citation profile
45 federal appellate · 6 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 121 later decisions — most recently March 2025 · most notably Dube v. State University of New York (1990), Stewart v. Baldwin County Board of Education (1990)
45 federal appellate · 6 district · 2 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. § 1291 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Anderson v. Creighton · Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp. · Wolff v. McDonnell
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 121 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he boundaries of the supposed “right” must be sufficiently definite so that the official understood that his actions violated it or, in other words, that the unlawfulness of his actions was evident.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[w]hen [an] inmate is disabled, either by being confined full-time to SHU or transferred from the prison in which the incident occurred, the duty of assistance is greater because the inmate’s ability to help himself is reduced. Aikens v. Lash, 514 F.2d 55, 59 (7th Cir.1975), vacated on other grounds, 425 U.S. 947 , 96 S.Ct. 1721 , 48 L.Ed.2d 191 (1976). If the inmate’s right to marshall evidence and present a defense to charges of breaches of prison disciplinary rules is to mean anything, then an inmate so disabled must be provided with some assistance.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“must conclusively determine the disputed question, resolve an important issue completely separate from the merits of the action, and be effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment.”
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.