Michelson v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1,538 federal appellate · 43 district · 870 state decisions

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 2,863 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Both propriety and abuse of hearsay reputation testimony, on both sides, depend on numerous and subtle considerations, difficult to detect or appraise from a cold record, and therefore rarely and only on clear showing of prejudicial abuse of discretion will Courts of Appeals disturb rulings of trial courts on this subject.”

   210 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Marshall v. Lonberger · United States v. Conforti

2. “... archaic, paradoxical and full of compromises and compensations by which an irrational advantage to one side is offset by a poorly reasoned counterprivilege to the other. But somehow it has proved a workable even if clumsy system when moderated by discretionary controls in the hands of a wise and strong trial court. To pull one misshapen stone out of the grotesque structure is more likely simply to upset its present balance between adverse interests than to establish a rational edifice.”

   13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Marshall v. Lonberger · United States v. Cudlitz

3. ““The rumor of the misconduct, when admitted, goes far, in spite of all theory and of the judge’s charge, towards fixing the misconduct as a fact upon the other person [defendant], and thus does three improper things, — (1) it violates the fundamental rule of fairness (ante, § 979) that prohibits the use of such facts, (2) it gets at them by hearsay only, and not by trustworthy testimony, and (3) it leaves the other person [defendant] no means of defending himself by denial or explanation, such as he would otherwise have had if the rule had allowed that conduct to be made the subject of an issue. Moreover, these are not occurrences of possibility, but of daily practice. This method of inquiry or cross-examination is frequently resorted to by counsel for the very purpose of injuring by indirection a character which they are forbidden directly to attack in that way; they rely upon the mere putting of the question (not earing that it is answered negatively) to convey their covert insinuation. The value of the inquiry for testing purposes is often so small and the opportunities of its abuse by underhand ways are so great that the practice may amount to little more than a mere subterfuge, and should be strictly supervised by forbidding it to-counsel who do not use it in good faith.””

   7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Awkard v. United States · United States v. Davenport