Pierce v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
314 U.S. 306 · 1941
Citation profile
41 federal appellate · 6 district · 50 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 171 later decisions (31 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2017 · most notably United States v. Harriss (1954), Bouie v. City of Columbia (1964)
41 federal appellate · 6 district · 50 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
reviewedPierce v. United States (from Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Lanzetta v. State New Jersey · Stromberg v. People of State of California · Nash v. United States · Moses Haas v. William Henkel · Warszower 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 171 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“judicial enlargement of a criminal act by interpretation is at war with a fundamental concept of the common law that crimes must be defined with appropriate definiteness.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“an officer or employee acting under the authority of the United States, or any Department, or any officer of the Government thereof”
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.