Hirabayashi v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
320 U.S. 81 · 1943
Citation profile
1,253 federal appellate · 112 district · 216 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,136 later decisions (224 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Roviaro v. United States (1957), Benton v. Maryland (1969)
1,253 federal appellate · 112 district · 216 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Glasser v. United States · Yick Wo v. Hopkins · M'Culloch v. State of Maryland · Home Building & Loan Ass'n v. Blaisdell · Cannon v. United States
Cited together with Korematsu v. United States · Benton v. Maryland · Lawn v. United States · Bolling v. Sharpe · Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al.
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 2,136 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.”
43 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The conviction under the second count is without constitutional infirmity. Hence we have no occasion to review the conviction on the first count since, as already stated, the sentences on the two counts are to run concurrently and conviction on the second is sufficient to sustain the sentence.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“racial discriminations are in most circumstances irrelevant and therefore prohibited....”
3 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.