Dennis v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
339 U.S. 162 · 1950
Citation profile
543 federal appellate · 33 district · 235 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,036 later decisions (38 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2025 · most notably Wainwright v. Witt (1985), Duncan v. State of Louisiana (1968)
543 federal appellate · 33 district · 235 state decisions — followed in 34 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
reviewedDennis v. United States (from District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 2 U.S.C. § 192
Relies on Tumey v. State of Ohio · Frank v. Mangum · United States v. Wood · Frazier v. United States
Cited together with Smith v. Phillips · Irvin v. Dowd · United States v. Wood · Frazier v. United States · Remmer 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 1,036 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the trial court has a serious duty to determine the question of actual bias, and a broad discretion in its rulings on challenges therefor.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[o]ne may not know or altogether understand the imponderables which cause one to think what he thinks, but surely one who is trying as an honest man to live up to the sanctity of his oath is well qualified to say whether he has an unbiased mind in a certain matter.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Impartiality is not a technical conception. It is a state of mind. For the ascertainment of this mental attitude of appropriate indifference, the Constitution lays down no particular tests and procedure is not chained to any ancient and artificial formula.” United States v. Wood, supra, 299 U.S. at 145, 146 , 57 S.Ct. at 185 .”
5 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.