American Communications Ass'n v. Douds’s Empirical Analysis
339 U.S. 382 · 1950
Citation profile
775 federal appellate · 133 district · 411 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,973 later decisions (228 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2023 · most notably Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth (1972), Bell v. Wolfish (1979)
775 federal appellate · 133 district · 411 state decisions — followed in 40 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.
Relationships
Relies on Cantwell v. State of Connecticut · Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization · National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. · Screws v. United States · West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette
Cited together with Dennis v. United States · Cantwell v. State of Connecticut · V Subversive Activities Control Board · Garner v. Board of Public Works · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. State of Alabama Patterson
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 1,973 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]hen authority derives in part from Government's thumb on the scales, the exercise of that power by private persons becomes closely akin, in some respects, to its exercise by Government itself.”
52 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(t)he applicable standard . . . is . . . the practical criterion of fair notice to those to whom the statute is directed. The particular context is all important.”
15 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent““From information before its several Committees and from facts of general knowledge, Congress could rationally conclude that, behind its political party facade, the Communist Party is a conspiratorial and revolutionary junta, organized to reach ends and to use methods which are incompatible with our constitutional system. A rough and compressed grouping of this data would permit Congress to draw these important conclusions as to its distinguishing characteristics. “1. The goal of the Communist Party is to seize powers of government by and for a minority rather than to acquire power through the vote of a free electorate. It seeks not merely a change of administration or of Congress, or reform legislation within the constitutional framework. * * * “The Communist program only begins with seizure of government, which then becomes a means to impose upon society an organization on principles fundamentally opposed to those presupposed by our Constitution. Its purposes forcibly to recast our whole social and political structure after the Muscovite model of police-state dictatorship. * * * * * * “2. The Communist Party alone among American parties past or present is dominated and controlled by a foreign government. It is a satrap party which, to the threat of civil disorder, adds the threat of betrayal into alien hands. “The chain of command from the Kremlin to the American party is stoutly denied and usually invisible, but it was unmistakably disclosed by the American Communist Party”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.