Crawford-El v. Britton’s Empirical Analysis
93 F.3d 813 · 1996
Citation profile
40 federal appellate · 22 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 106 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Crawford-El v. Britton (1998), Thaddeus-X v. Blatter (1999)
40 federal appellate · 22 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.
Appellate journey
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 241 (Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996) · 18 U.S.C. § 242 · 28 U.S.C. § 1915 · 28 U.S.C. § 2072 · 28 U.S.C. § 2674 · 29 U.S.C. § 794 · 42 U.S.C. § 1981 (Civil Rights Act of 1866) · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H · Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corporation · Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics
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 106 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the distinction between direct and circumstantial evidence has no direct correlation with the strength of [a] plaintiff's case.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[S]ince there is no justification for harassing people for exercising their constitutional rights[, harassment] need not be great in order to be actionable. Yet ... [i]t would trivialize the First Amendment to hold that harassment for exercising the right of free speech was always actionable no matter how unlikely to deter a person of ordinary firmness from that exercise....”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“whether an official's acts would chill or silence a person of ordinary firmness from future First Amendment activities.”
3 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.