Case Citator › Clark v. Johnson

Clark v. Johnson

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

Abrogated
Court
Fifth Circuit
Citation
202 F.3d 760
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
33 of 33
Citing cases (total)
33
Treatment dates
2000
Abrogated
A reviewed court treats this case as abrogated by later authority. Clark v. Johnson's rule that a state court decision warrants habeas relief only when its error is beyond debate among reasonable jurists was abrogated by Williams v. Taylor. Justice O’Connor's controlling opinion rejected that test for applying 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).
More on how this was screened

Clark had adopted the test from Drinkard v. Johnson; the Fifth Circuit later acknowledged in Gardner v. Johnson and Valdez v. Cockrell that Williams rejected Drinkard's test. Clark's separate ruling permitting summary judgment in habeas proceedings is unaffected. All 33 flagged citations have been read; the confirmed change is listed below. The CourtListener text retrieved for Williams contains Justice Stevens's opinion but omits Justice O’Connor's separate Part II, which is the controlling opinion on this issue. The quoted Part II text was checked against Cornell LII's opinion and added to the stored passage with its source identified.

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.

33 later cases cite Clark v. Johnson; 33 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 Clark v. Johnson?

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 Supreme Court rejected the reasonable jurists test that Clark borrowed from Drinkard for deciding whether a state court unreasonably applied federal law.

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

    The “all reasonable jurists” standard would tend to mislead federal habeas courts by focusing their attention on a subjective inquiry rather than on an objective one. For example, the Fifth Circuit appears to have applied its “reasonable jurist” standard in just such a subjective manner. See Drinkard v. Johnson
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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