Case Citator › Jones v. Brown

Jones v. Brown

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

Questioned by some courts
Court
Third Circuit
Citation
461 F.3d 353
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
44 of 44
Citing cases (total)
44
Treatment dates
2010
Questioned by some courts
At least one reviewed court has questioned this case’s reasoning or continued validity. No reviewed court has overruled it. All 44 flagged citations have been read. Guajardo-Palma v. Martinson questioned the First Amendment rationale of Jones v. Brown, as listed below, while supporting the protection for confidential lawyer mail.
More on how this was screened

Other courts continued to apply Jones's legal-mail rule.

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.

44 later cases cite Jones v. Brown; 44 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 Jones v. Brown?

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

Questioned

  • The Seventh Circuit questioned the First Amendment rationale cited in Jones and favored grounding protection for confidential lawyer mail in access to the courts or due process.

    Guajardo-Palma v. Martinson · Seventh Circuit · filed

    A number of cases characterize the reading of mail to or from a prisoner’s lawyer in a pending or impending litigation as infringing the right of free speech rather than or in addition to the right of access to the courts. The theory is that reading communications between a lawyer and his client “chills the individual’s ability to engage in protected speech.” Denius v. Dunlap, 209 F.3d 944, 954 (7th Cir. 2000); see also, e.g., Jones v. Brown, 461 F.3d 353, 358-60 (3d Cir. 2006); Davis v. Goord, 320 F.3d 346, 351-52 (2d Cir. 2003); Brewer v. Wilkinson, supra, 3 F.3d at 821, 825-26. But since the purpose of confidential communication with one’s lawyer is to win a case rather than to enrich the marketplace of ideas, it seems more straightforward to base the concern with destroying that confidentiality on the right of access to the courts (or, as we’re about to point out, on the due process right to a fair hearing).
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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