Dunlop v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

340 federal appellate · 53 district · 188 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 721 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Now. what is [are] obscene, lascivious, lewd, or indecent publications is largely a question of your own conscience and your own opinion; but it must come — before it can be said of such literature or publication — it must come up to this point; that it most be calculated, with the ordinary reader, to deprave him, deprave his morals, or lead to impure purposes. * * ® It is your duty to ascertain, in the first place, if they are calculated to deprave the morals; if they are calculated to lower that standard which we regard, as essential to civilization; if they are calculated to excite those feelings which, in their proper field, are all right, but which, transcending the limits of that proper field, play most of the mischief in the world.” “The construction placed by counsel uijou this is that it practically directed the jury that obscene literature was such as tended to deprave the morals of the public in any way whatever, whereas the true test of what constitutes obscene literature is that which tends to deprave the morals in one way only, namely, by exciting sexual desires and lascivious thoughts. It is not, however, the charge given by the court that was too broad, but the construction put upon it by counsel. The alleged obscene and indecent matter consisted of advertisements by women, soliciting or offering inducements for the visits of men, usually ‘refined gentlemen,’ to their rooms, sometimes under the disguise of ‘baths’ and ‘massage,’ and oftener for the mere purpo”

   35 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. United States v. Young · United States v. Rodriguez

2. “So, if a person be stabbed to death, and another, who was last seen in his company, were arrested near the spot with a bloody dagger in his possession,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Hooper

3. “the shoes of an accused person were of peculiar size or shape, and footmarks were found in the mud or snow of corresponding size or shape,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Hooper