Arshack v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1974
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently September 1993
12 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 United States v. O'Brien · Adams v. United States Ex Rel. McCann · Cox v. State of Louisiana · Edwards v. South Carolina · Sparf 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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“as used in the statute means that the act was committed by the defendants voluntarily, with knowledge that it was prohibited by a law and with the purpose of violating the law and not by mistake, accident, or in good faith. To act willfully means to do an act without a lawful excuse. The word”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“None of this should be taken to mean that motivations and purposes, to the extent that they are ascertainable, should be wholly disregarded in the legal process. In criminal cases, the gravity of the offense will be weighed at the time of sentencing, together with the character, background, and the apparent purposes of the offender. But to permit a man’s claim that he acted in accordance with the dictates of his conscience to constitute a defense to an otherwise criminal act would lead the instruments of justice down from the certainties of the rule of law, equally and impartially applied to ascertainable facts, to an impossible search for motivations and beliefs. In that kind of search, for which there could almost by definition be no objective standards, the courts, and hence the weight of government, would inevitably end up protecting those whose philosophy happened to be favored by the men in power at any given time while finding wanting the purpose, the belief, and the sincerity of those who harbored an opposite viewpoint.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“Section 1. No person or group of persons shall wilfully and knowingly: (a) utter loud, threatening, or abusive language, or engage in any disorderly or disruptive conduct within any building or part of any building owned or under the control of the District of Columbia with the intent to impede, disrupt, or disturb the orderly conduct of any meeting, hearing, or other proceeding of the District of Columbia Council, or of any committee or subcommittee thereof, or the orderly conduct of official business of any officer, employee, or agency of the District of Columbia Government[.]”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.