Fong Haw Tan v. Phelan’s Empirical Analysis
333 U.S. 6 · 1948
Citation profile
510 federal appellate · 20 district · 56 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 812 later decisions (50 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Immigration & Naturalization Service v. Elias-Zacarias (1992), Immigration & Naturalization Service v. Cardoza-Fonseca (1987)
510 federal appellate · 20 district · 56 state decisions — followed in 15 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
reviewedFong Haw Tan v. Phelan (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Delgadillo v. Carmichael · Nishimoto v. Nagle · United States ex rel. Mignozzi v. Day · Tassari v. Schmucker
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 812 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(S)ince the stakes are considerable for the individual, we will not assume that Congress meant to trench on his freedom beyond that which is required by the narrowest of several possible meanings of the words used.”
31 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“§ 1251. Deportable Aliens — General Cases — (a) Any alien in the United States (including an alien crewman) shall, upon the order of the Attorney General, be deported who — * * * (4) is convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude committed within five years after entry and either sentenced to confinement or confined therefor in a prison or corrective institution, for a year or more, or who at any time after entry is convicted of two crimes involving moral turpitude, not arising out of a single scheme of criminal misconduct, regardless of whether the convictions were in a single trial; * * *”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Gubbels v. Hoy
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.