Grayned v. City of Rockford’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
618 federal appellate · 274 district · 1,305 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,200 later decisions (71 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Bell v. Wolfish (1979), Buckley v. Valeo (1976)
618 federal appellate · 274 district · 1,305 state decisions — followed in 48 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 Grayned v. City of Rockford · Connally v. General Construction Co. · Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District · Cantwell v. State of Connecticut · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. Y Button
Cited together with Grayned v. City of Rockford · Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc. · Broadrick v. Oklahoma · Kolender v. Lawson · Connally v. General Construction Co.
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 3,200 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is a basic principle of due process that an enactment is void for vagueness if its prohibitions are not clearly defined. Vague laws offend several important values. First, because we assume that man is free to steer between lawful and unlawful conduct, we insist that laws give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited, so that he may act accordingly. Vague laws may trap the innocent by not providing fair warning. Second, if arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement is to be prevented, laws must provide explicit standards for those who apply them. A vague law impermissibly delegates basic policy matters to policemen, judges, and juries for resolution on an ad hoc and subjective basis, with the attendant dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory application.”
744 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“any noise or diversion which disturbs or tends to disturb the peace or good order of [a] school session”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“`the fertile "legal imagination can conjure up hypothetical cases in which the meaning”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.