Ludecke v. Watkins’s Empirical Analysis
335 U.S. 160 · 1948
Citation profile
157 federal appellate · 21 district · 16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 359 later decisions (70 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Baker v. Carr (1962), United States v. Salerno (1987)
157 federal appellate · 21 district · 16 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedUnited States ex rel. Ludecke v. Watkins (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 50 U.S.C. § 21
Relies on Home Building & Loan Ass'n v. Blaisdell · Korematsu v. United States · Bridges v. Wixon · Johnson v. Stevenson · Wong Wing 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 359 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Again, in Ludecke v. Watkins, 335 U.S. 160 , 170, 68 S.Ct. 1429, 1434, 92 L.Ed. 881, it is stated: `It is not for us to question a belief by the President that enemy aliens who were justifiably deemed fit subjects for internment during active hostilities do not lose their potency for mischief during the period of confusion and conflict which is characteristic of a state of war even when the guns are silent but the peace of Peace has not come.'”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Al-Alwi v. Trump · Ali v. Trump“guiding organ in the conduct of our foreign affairs,”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“vast powers in relation to the outside world.”
2 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.