Case Citator › Rock v. Arkansas

Rock v. Arkansas

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
483 U.S. 44
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
70 of 71
Citing cases (total)
2,302
Treatment dates
2005
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. Rock v. Arkansas has one confirmed limitation listed below. Of 71 flagged citations, 70 citing opinions were read and one could not be retrieved, so it remains unread.
More on how this was screened

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declined to treat Rock's recognition of a fundamental right to testify as making its denial structural error. The other opinions read applied Rock, used its stated evidentiary boundaries, or addressed other authorities.

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.

2,302 later cases cite Rock v. Arkansas; 71 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading; 70 of them have been read, and the text of 1 citing opinion could not be retrieved, so it remains 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 Rock v. Arkansas?

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 Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declined to extend Rock's fundamental-right analysis into a rule that denying a defendant the right to testify is structural error.

    Johnson v. State · Texas Court of Criminal Appeals · filed

    The right to testify was, however, recognized as a “fundamental” constitutional right in Rock v. Arkansas. ... The question is whether the Supreme Court’s discussion in Rock, including its characterization of the right as “fundamental” and its discussion of the third source of the right to testify, amounted to a pronouncement that a violation of the right to testify was a “structural” error for the purpose of conducting a harm analysis. We conclude that it did not.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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