Churchill v. Waters’s Empirical Analysis
977 F.2d 1114 · 1992
Citation profile
48 federal appellate · 1 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 63 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2013 · most notably Waters v. Churchill (1994), Dia v. Ashcroft (2003)
48 federal appellate · 1 district · 3 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 · United States v. Diebold, Inc. · Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle · Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois
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 63 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“has the best 'opportunity to observe the verbal and nonverbal behavior of the witnesses focusing on the subject's reactions and responses to the interrogatories, their facial expressions, attitudes, tone of voice, eye contact, posture and body movements,' as well as confused or nervous speech patterns in contrast with merely looking at the cold pages of an appellate record.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'Whether an employee's speech addresses a matter of public concern must be determined by the content, form, and context of a given statement, as revealed by the whole record.' [Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138 , 147-48, 103 S.Ct. 1684, 1690, 75 L.Ed.2d 708 (1983) ]. We have previously 'recognized that content is the greatest single factor in the Connick inquiry.' Berg v. Hunter, 854 F.2d 238 , 243 (7th Cir.1988) [, cert. denied, 489 U.S. 1053 [109 S.Ct. 1314, 103 L.Ed.2d 583 (1989) ].”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(1) the need to maintain discipline or harmony among co-workers; (2) the need for confidentiality; (3) the need to curtail conduct which impedes the [employee’s] proper and competent performance of his daily duties; and (4) the need to encourage a close and personal relationship between the employee and his superiors, where that relationship calls for loyalty and confidence.”
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.