Crowell v. Benson’s Empirical Analysis
285 U.S. 22 · 1932
Citation profile
1,446 federal appellate · 334 district · 415 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,778 later decisions (339 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Environment (1998), Thomas v. Arn (1986)
1,446 federal appellate · 334 district · 415 state decisions — followed in 42 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
reviewedCrowell v. Benson (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Caminetti v. United States · Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen · Kline v. Burke Construction Co. · The Osceola
Cited together with Northern Pipeline Construction Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co. · Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority · Buckley v. Valeo · United States v. Rumely · Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. Schor
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 3,778 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“When the validity of an act of the Congress is drawn in question, and even if a serious doubt of constitutionality is raised, it is a cardinal principle that this Court will first ascertain whether a construction of the statute is fairly possible by which the question may be avoided.”
112 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“between the Government and persons subject to its authority in connection with the performance of the constitutional functions of the executive or legislative departments,”
17 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the liability of one individual to another under the law as defined,”
15 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.