United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co.’s Empirical Analysis
310 U.S. 150 · 1940
Citation profile
2,552 federal appellate · 404 district · 391 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5,413 later decisions (359 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2025 · most notably Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corporation (1986), United States v. Olano (1993)
2,552 federal appellate · 404 district · 391 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedUnited States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co. (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Berger v. United States · Standard Oil Company of New Jersey v. United States · United States v. Atkinson · Ala Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States
Cited together with United States v. Trenton Potteries Co. · Standard Oil Company of New Jersey v. United States · Northern Pacific Railway Co. v. United States · American Tobacco Co. v. United States · International Salt Co. 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 5,413 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Under the Sherman Act a combination formed for the purpose and with the effect of raising, depressing, fixing, pegging, or stabilizing the price of a commodity in interstate or foreign commerce is illegal per se.”
232 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he typical method adopted by Congress when it has lifted the ban of the Sherman Act is the scrutiny and approval of designated public representatives,”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““As we believe it is merely sur-plusage to enter into a minute discussion of the office of a bill of particulars in a criminal case, we will briefly state our reasons for refusing to require the government to amplify the allegations of the indictment except as hereinafter ordered. Because the demands of defendants for enlargement of an accusation of a criminal offense cannot be considered or dealt with in the abstract, the applicability of this form of pretrial criminal procedure must be viewed in the light of the specific case as it is laid in the indictment that is immediately before the court for consideration. This is especially true in charges of conspiracy to violate the anti-trust laws of the United States. In such prosecutions, if the indictment, considering the record history of the case, adequately states the alleged unlawful combination or conspiracy so as to enable all accused to clearly understand it, to properly prepare for trial within a reasonable time, and to avoid prejudicial surprise at the trial, a court order requiring detailed enlargement or expansion of the essential ultimate facts sufficiently pleaded may operate to cripple and nullify the established national policy of prohibiting or treating as illegal all contracts or combination of individuals or corporations substantially restrictive of free competition, or to fix prices of commodities, in the channels of interstate business.””
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.