Ever Wonder Which SCOTUS Cases Have Been Cited the Most?

We’re just days away from a new U.S. Supreme Court Term. With some notable exceptions, most folks pay attention to Supreme Court decisions not because of who wins or loses those particular cases, but because of what those decisions mean for the law going forward.

So which Supreme Court decisions have been cited the most? The top-ranked cases, it turns out, are right in your 1L civil procedure syllabus. My article that came out this spring (The Rise and Fall of Plausibility Pleading?) includes some data on this from the Shepard’s citation service. In terms of citations by federal courts, the Top-5 are all civil procedure cases: the 1986 summary judgment trilogy (#1, #2, #5) plus Twombly (#3) and Iqbal (#4). Here’s the Top-20:

Rank	Case	Federal Court Citing References
1	Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242 (1986)	195,159
2	Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317 (1986)	183,365
3	Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007)	127,521
4	Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009)	104,712
5	Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574 (1986)	94,229
6	Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984)	70,312
7	Thomas v. Arn, 474 U.S. 140 (1985)	68,944
8	Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41 (1957)	60,389
9	Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473 (2000)	51,901
10	Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519 (1972)	51,029
11	McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973)	44,833
12	Monell v. Dep't of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978)	44,577
13	Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319 (1989)	42,084
14	Richardson v. Perales, 402 U.S. 389 (1971)	41,975
15	Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97 (1976)	41,044
16	Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362 (2000)	40,156
17	Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994)	37,406
18	Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322 (2003)	35,293
19	Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89 (2007)	28,298
20	Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982)	26,999

You can find the full Top-100 in Appendix A of the article (p.59-62 of the pdf file).