Greer v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
245 U.S. 559 · 1918
Citation profile
114 federal appellate · 40 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 198 later decisions (22 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2020 · most notably Brinegar v. United States (1949), Old Chief v. United States (1997)
114 federal appellate · 40 state decisions — followed in 14 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedGreer v. United States (from Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Rosen v. United States · Garst v. United States · Mullen v. United States · Price 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 198 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Obviously the character of the defendant was a matter of fact, which, if investigated, might turn out either way. It is not established as matter of law that all persons indicted are men of good character. * * * “ * * * In reason it should not be. A presumption upon a matter of fact, when it is not merely a disguise for some other principle, means that common experience shows the fact to be so generally true that courts may notice the truth. Whatever the scope of the presumption that a man is innocent of the specific crime charged, it cannot be said that by common experience the character of most people indicted by a grand jury is good.””
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.