Johnson v. Eisentrager’s Empirical Analysis
339 U.S. 763 · 1950
Citation profile
499 federal appellate · 199 district · 38 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,082 later decisions (39 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Reid v. Covert (1957), Landon v. Plasencia (1982)
499 federal appellate · 199 district · 38 state decisions — followed in 12 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
reviewedEisentrager v. Forrestal (from District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 22 U.S.C. § 1732 · 28 U.S.C. § 2243 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996) · 50 U.S.C. § 21 · 50 U.S.C. § 3803
Relies on Bell v. Hood · Yick Wo v. Hopkins · Wade v. Hunter · Cannon v. United States · United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp.
Cited together with United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez · Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer · Reid v. Covert · Baker v. Carr · United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp.
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 1,082 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The alien, to whom the United States has been traditionally hospitable, has been accorded a generous and ascending scale of rights as he increases his identity with our society. Mere lawful presence in the country creates an implied assurance of safe conduct and gives him certain rights; they become more exten sive and secure when he makes a preliminary declaration of intention to become a citizen, and they expand to those of full citizenship upon naturalization.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Such trials would hamper the war effort and bring aid and comfort to the enemy. They would diminish the prestige of our commanders, not only with enemies but with wavering neutrals. It would be difficult to devise more effective fettering of a field commander than to allow the very enemies he is ordered to reduce to submission to call him to account in his own civil courts and divert his efforts and attention from the military offensive abroad to the legal defensive at home. Nor is it unlikely that the result of such enemy litigiousness would be a conflict between judicial and military opinion highly comforting to enemies of the United States.”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“in extending constitutional protections beyond the citizenry the Court has been at pains to point out that it was the alien's presence within its territorial jurisdiction that gave the Judiciary the power to act”
12 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.