United States v. Chambers’s Empirical Analysis
291 U.S. 217 · 1934
Citation profile
204 federal appellate · 33 district · 150 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 561 later decisions (64 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2025 · most notably Landgraf v. USI Film Products (1994), Linkletter v. Walker (1965)
204 federal appellate · 33 district · 150 state decisions — followed in 27 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 Funk v. United States · United States v. Tynen · Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway Co. v. Dennis · Norris v. Crocker
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 561 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he repeal of any statute shall not have the effect to release or extinguish any penalty, forfeiture, or liability incurred under such statute, unless the repealing Act shall so expressly provide, and such statute shall be treated as still remaining in force for the purpose of sustaining any proper action or prosecution for the enforcement of such penalty, forfeiture, or liability. The expiration of a temporary statute shall not have the effect to release or extinguish any penalty, forfeiture, or liability incurred under such statute, unless the temporary statute shall so expressly provide, and such statute shall be treated as still remaining in force for the purpose of sustaining any proper action or prosecution for the enforcement of such penalty, forfeiture, or liability.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The longstanding common law view is that a “continued prosecution necessarily depend[s] upon the continued life of the statute which the prosecution seeks to apply. In case a statute is repealed or rendered inoperative, no further proceedings can be had to enforce it in pending prosecutions unless competent authority has kept the statute alive for that purpose.... Prosecution for crimes is but an application or enforcement of the law, and if the prosecution continues the law must continue to vivify it.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Bryant · Pierce v. State““What we have said is applicable to prosecutions, including proceedings on appeal, continued or begun after the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment. We are not dealing with a case where final judgment was rendered prior to that ratification. Such a case would present a distinct question which is not before us.””
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.