Spear’s Empirical Analysis
Citation profile
9 federal appellate · 39 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 141 later decisions — most recently September 2018 · most notably Scotto v. Almenas (1998), Ciambriello v. County of Nassau (2002)
9 federal appellate · 39 district · 1 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
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co. · Scheuer v. Rhodes · Imbler v. Pachtman · Butz v. Economou
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 141 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a private actor acts under color of state law when the private actor 'is a willful participant in joint activity with the State or its agents.'”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“... official performing certain functions analogous to those of a prosecutor should be able to claim absolute immuni ty with respect to such acts. The decision to initiate administrative proceedings against an individual or corporation is very much like the prosecutor’s decision to initiate or move forward with a criminal prosecution... The discretion which executive officials exercise with respect to the initiation of administrative proceedings might be distorted if their immunity from damages arising from that decision was less than complete.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“) published an editorial critical of the Town of West Hartford's police department in suppressing anti-abortion demonstrations. 22 The Town thereafter filed a racketeering (RICO) suit against Spear and others in an effort to prohibit illegal protest activities. The RICO action alleged Spear and others conspired to interfere with civil rights. Spear then brought a § 1983 action against, inter alia , the Town of West Hartford, its Town Manager, and Summit Women's Center West, a women's healthcare facility, alleging that the RICO lawsuit”
1 later decision 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.