Hoffman v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
341 U.S. 479 · 1951
Citation profile
1,544 federal appellate · 193 district · 1,421 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4,204 later decisions (115 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2025 · most notably Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera (1966), Malloy v. Hogan (1964)
1,544 federal appellate · 193 district · 1,421 state decisions — followed in 49 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
reviewedUnited States v. Hoffman (from Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 401
Relies on Edwin Hale v. William Henkel · Gouled v. United States · Counselman v. Hitchcock · Rogers v. United States
Cited together with Rogers v. United States · Brown v. Walker · Mason v. United States · Blau v. United States · Emspak 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 4,204 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“To sustain the privilege, it need only be evident from the implications of the question, in the setting in which it is asked, that a responsive answer to the question or an explanation of why it cannot be answered might be dangerous because injurious disclosure could result.”
237 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“` perfectly clear, from a careful consideration of all the circumstances in the case, that the witness is mistaken, and that the answers cannot possibly have such a tendency'”
22 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”
19 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.