Case Status
Whether a case is still good law — and when it isn't, we show you where.
The status line
Citing a case that has been overruled is the classic legal-research failure, and checking for it is usually a paid feature. On OpenJurist, every case page carries a status line, free: whether the case stands, and if it was overruled, by which decision — with the overruling case linked so you can read it yourself rather than take our word for it.
What the labels mean
- Overruled — a documented overruling exists: the overruling decision itself, court-published case history, or a curated reference, each verified so the overruling opinion actually discusses the case it overrules. The label always links to the overruling decision.
- Good law — no overruling or superseding decision appears in our records. Our records span millions of decisions, but no database of American case law is complete, and courts can limit a precedent without formally overruling it — so this is our best, continuously updated reading of the record, not a guarantee.
- Validity is not disposition — "is this still good law?" is kept strictly separate from "was this judgment affirmed or reversed?" A case can be affirmed and later overruled, or reversed on one issue and authoritative on another.
See it live
- Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) →Overruled by Brown v. Board of Education (1954) — the status line names the overruling case and links straight to it.
- Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986) →Overruled by Lawrence v. Texas (2003) — seventeen years of citations, then the reversal, all visible in the record.
- Betts v. Brady, 316 U.S. 455 (1942) →Overruled by Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) — the right-to-counsel arc, documented end to end.
- Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966) →Good law — no overruling or superseding decision in our records, and the page says exactly that.
Want to check a case of your own? Paste its citation into the free citation checker — it reports the case's status along with whether the citation resolves at all.
The method, in full
What we check and in what order, what we deliberately never infer, and how to report negative treatment we've missed: how we determine case status →
The rest of the Empirical Record
- Case-by-case analysis → — Citation profile, citations over time, the appellate journey, and how later courts treated the case.
- Most-quoted passages → — The exact sentences later courts rely on, verified word-for-word against the source opinion.
- Circuit splits → — Where the federal courts of appeals openly disagree, organized by issue.
- Judge records → — What each judge’s opinions did downstream — quotes, landmark cases, and a career timeline.
- Citation checker → — Paste a citation or a quote; we verify it against the record. Free.
- Compare laws by state → — One legal subject at a time — every state’s statute beside the federal law.
New here? What we mean by the empirical record · what ships next