Case Citator › Johnson v. Zerbst

Johnson v. Zerbst

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Limited by some courts
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
304 U.S. 458
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
193 of 216
Citing cases (total)
10,516
Treatment dates
1976
Limited by some courts
At least one reviewed court has limited this case’s holding to narrower facts or a narrower rule. No reviewed court has overruled it. Of the 216 flagged citations for Johnson v. Zerbst, 193 have been read and the text of the other 23 could not be retrieved; the one confirmed limited treatment is listed below. Estelle v. Williams confined Johnson's exacting knowing-and-intelligent waiver analysis to relinquishment of fundamental rights such as the right to counsel and declined to extend that analysis to counseled strategic or tactical decisions.
More on how this was screened

The other opinions read applied Johnson's right-to-counsel, waiver, habeas, and void-judgment rules, reported Johnson's effect on older authority, rejected arguments that later law displaced it, or used nearby treatment language about other decisions and litigation issues.

The treatments below are confirmed; unread citations could still change the overall status.
Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case, except the ones whose text could not be retrieved.

10,516 later cases cite Johnson v. Zerbst; 216 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading; 193 of them have been read, and the text of 23 citing opinions could not be retrieved, so those remain unread. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Johnson v. Zerbst?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Limited

  • The Supreme Court confined Johnson's exacting knowing-and-intelligent waiver standard to relinquishment of fundamental rights such as the right to counsel and declined to extend it to counseled strategic or tactical decisions, including failure to object to trial in prison clothing.

    Estelle v. Williams · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    We are not confronted with an alleged relinquishment of a fundamental right of the sort at issue in Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458 (1938). There, the Court understandably found it difficult to conceive of an accused making a knowing decision to forgo the fundamental right to the assistance of counsel, absent a showing of conscious surrender of a known right. The Court has not, however, engaged in this exacting analysis with respect to strategic and tactical decisions, even those with constitutional implications, by a counseled accused.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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