Case Citator › Hewitt v. Helms

Hewitt v. Helms

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

Abrogated
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
459 U.S. 460
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
331 of 331
Citing cases (total)
3,877
Treatment dates
1995
Abrogated
A reviewed court treats this case as abrogated by later authority. Hewitt v. Helms is abrogated in part by the confirmed treatment listed below. Sandin v. Conner abandoned Hewitt's mandatory-language methodology for identifying state-created prison liberty interests and substituted an atypical-and-significant-hardship inquiry, while expressly declining to overrule Hewitt's holdings.
More on how this was screened

All 331 flagged citations have now been read. Wilkinson v. Austin and later opinions continue to treat Hewitt's informal-review procedure as instructive once a liberty interest exists; other nearby adverse language reported Sandin, concerned unrelated authorities, or confused this decision with the separate prevailing-party opinion at 482 U.S. 755.

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.

3,877 later cases cite Hewitt v. Helms; 331 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. 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 Hewitt v. Helms?

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

Abrogated

  • The Court abandoned Hewitt's mandatory-language methodology for state-created prison liberty interests while leaving its holdings technically intact.

    Sandin v. Conner · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    Such abandonment of Hewitt’s methodology does not technically require us to overrule any holding of this Court. The Court in Olim v. Wakinekona, 461 U. S. 238 (1983), and Kentucky Dept. of Corrections v. Thompson, 490 U. S. 464 (1989), concluded no liberty interest was at stake. Although it did locate a liberty interest in Hewitt, it concluded that due process required no additional procedural guarantees for the inmate. As such, its answer to the anterior question of whether the inmate possessed a liberty interest at all was unnecessary to the disposition of the case. Our decision today only abandons an approach that in practice is difficult to administer and which produces anomalous results.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

Does this case still carry your argument?

Describe your facts. Ezel reads Hewitt v. Helms and the cases that treated it, then tells you whether it still holds for your situation, with citations.

Opens in Ezel Pro.

  • Checks the law as it stands today, not only this page
  • Cites every source it relies on, so you can verify it
  • Chat, drafting and research in one workspace