Pounds v. Griepenstroh’s Empirical Analysis
970 F.2d 338 · 1992
Citation profile
19 federal appellate · 1 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 35 later decisions — most recently March 2021 · most notably Marshall v. Allen (1993), Zorzi v. County of Putnam (1994)
19 federal appellate · 1 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
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Anderson v. Creighton · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Elrod v. Burns · Siegert v. Gilley
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 35 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he 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 light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how any plaintiff ... could have a clearly established right to be free from patronage dismissal unless a nearly identical case had already been decided.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[B]etween the strictly menial government worker (who, under Elrod and Branti, is clearly and completely protected form patronage firing) and the policymaker/confidential assistant (whose protection from patronage firing is non-existent), there is a range of government positions for which the propriety of patronage firing has depended largely on the courts' juggling of competing constitutional and political values.”
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.