Most-Quoted Passages
The exact sentences later courts rely on — verified word-for-word against the source.
The idea
Most citations are general: a court cites a case and moves on. But when a court quotes a case — lifts its exact language into a new opinion — it marks the precise sentence doing the legal work. Follow the quotations instead of the citations and an opinion stops being a wall of text: a handful of passages emerge as the ones the law actually runs on.
OpenJurist matches quotations across the corpus back to their source opinions. Each match is verified against the source text — a passage is credited only when the citing decision quotes that exact language — then ranked by how many distinct later decisions quote it. The passage an opinion is most relied on for is labeled the key passage; we deliberately never call it the "holding," because what later courts quote and what the deciding court held are not always the same thing.
Where you'll see them
- On every case page — the passages most relied on by later courts appear near the top, each with how many decisions quote it and who.
- On the case's empirical-analysis page — the full ranked list, with where each passage sits in the opinion and sample citing decisions. About the analysis pages →
- On judge records — every judge's notable quotes: the passages from opinions they wrote, ranked by how often later decisions quote them. About judge records →
- In the citation checker — paste a quotation with its citation and we check whether those words actually appear in that case. Try it →
See it live
- Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984) → The two-part ineffective-assistance standard — see which of its sentences thousands of later decisions keep quoting, and the full ranked list.
- Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966) → An opinion whose most-quoted language reaches every court class — compare the passages on its analysis page.
The standard
An unverified quote never enters the record: if the words can't be found in the source opinion, no match is created, full stop. Passage counts are therefore smaller than citation counts — a passage is credited only for decisions quoting that exact language, not for every decision that cites the case. Machine-derived analysis is labeled as such, and the primary sources are always one click away. See our editorial and sourcing policy.
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.
- 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.
- Case status → — Whether a case is still good law — and exactly how we compute it.
- 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