United States v. Limehouse’s Empirical Analysis
285 U.S. 424 · 1932
Citation profile
42 federal appellate · 6 district · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 87 later decisions (14 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2000 · most notably Roth v. United States (1957), Ginsberg v. New York (1968)
42 federal appellate · 6 district · 5 state decisions
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 Swearingen 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 87 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The indictment here under review contains no reference to ‘obscene, lewd, or lascivious’. The charge is of depositing ‘a certain filthy letter’. It is brought under the amendment to section 3893 of the Revised Statutes made by section 211 of the Criminal Code * * * which inserted the words, ‘and every filthy’ * * *. We think that it is is a more natural reading of the clause to hold that by the amendment Congress added a new class of unmailable matter — the filthy. The letters here in question plainly relate to sexual matters. We have no occasion to consider whether filthy letters of a different character fall within the prohibition of the Act.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““The letters contained much foul language; charged the addressee or persons associated with them with sexual immorality, and in some cases charged miscegenation and similar practices. They were coarse, vulgar, disgusting, indecent; and unquestionably filthy within the popular meaning of that term.””
1 later decision 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.