9 canonical passages across 8 cases, quoted by 342 opinions in total. These passages cluster together because the same opinions keep quoting them side by side — they state parts of one doctrine. The anchor passage is from Sims v. Singletary.
| # | Case | Flag | Canonical passage | Citers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sims v. Singletary Anchor | green | “when applying strickland, we are free to dispose of ineffectiveness claims on either of its two grounds.” | 62 |
| 2 | David Ronald Chandler v. United States | green | “to state the obvious: the trial lawyers, in every case, could have done something more or something different. so, omissions are inevitable . . . . he issue is not what is possible or 'what is prudent or appropriate, but only what is constitutionally compelled.” | 53 |
| 3 | James Willie Brown v. Frederick Head | green | “it is the objective reasonableness, not the correctness per se, of the state court decision that we are to decide.” | 51 |
| 4 | Cullen v. Pinholster | green | “this is a 'difficult to meet,' . . . and 'highly deferential standard for evaluating state-court rulings, which demands that state-court decisions be given the benefit of the doubt' . . . .” | 48 |
| 5 | Wilson v. Sellers | green | “federal habeas court simply reviews the specific reasons given by the state court and defers to those reasons if they are reasonable.” | 39 |
| 6 | Terrell M. Johnson v. Secretary, Doc | green | “double deference is doubly difficult for a petitioner to overcome, and it will be a rare case in which an ineffective assistance of counsel claim that was denied on the merits in state court is found to merit relief in a federal habeas proceeding.” | 27 |
| 7 | Michael Wade Nance v. Warden, Georgia Diagnostic Prison | green | “given the double deference due, it is a 'rare case in which an ineffective assistance of counsel claim that was denied on the merits in state court is found to merit relief in a federal habeas proceeding.” | 27 |
| 8 | White v. Woodall | green | “the critical point is that relief is available under 2254(d)(1)'s unreasonable-application clause if, and only if, it is so obvious that a clearly established rule applies to a given set of facts that there could be no 'fairminded disagreement' on the question . . . .” | 21 |
A red or yellow flag on a member means the underlying case has negative treatment — for those, check the case page before relying on the passage.