United States v. Oppenheimer’s Empirical Analysis
242 U.S. 85 · 1916
Citation profile
258 federal appellate · 57 district · 355 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 855 later decisions (73 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Ashe v. Swenson (1970), Benton v. Maryland (1969)
258 federal appellate · 57 district · 355 state decisions — followed in 39 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Frank v. Mangum · United States v. William Rabinowich · United States v. Kissel · Coffey v. United States
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 855 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It cannot be that the safeguards of the person, so often and so rightly mentioned with solemn reverence, are less than those that protect from a liability in debt.”
32 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The safeguard provided by the Constitution against the gravest abuses has tended to give the impression that when it did not apply in terms, there was no other principle that could. But the 5th Amendment was not intended to do away with what in the civil law is a fundamental principle of justice * * * in order, when a man once has been acquitted on the merits, to enable the government to prosecute him a second time.” (Emphasis supplied.) 1”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“decision or judgment sustaining a special plea in bar, when the defendant has not been put in jeopardy.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.