Boyce Motor Lines, Inc. v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1952
Citation profile
548 federal appellate · 190 district · 534 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,799 later decisions (64 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2024 · most notably Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc. (1982), Roth v. United States (1957)
548 federal appellate · 190 district · 534 state decisions — followed in 38 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. Boyce Motor Lines, Inc. (from Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Screws v. United States · Lanzetta v. State New Jersey · United States v. Petrillo · Nash v. United States
Cited together with Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc. · Connally v. General Construction Co. · United States v. National Dairy Products Corp. · Kolender v. Lawson · United States v. Harriss
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 1,799 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““A criminal statute must be sufficiently definite to give notice of the required conduct to one who would avoid its penalties, and to guide the judge in its application and the lawyer in defending one charged with its violation. But few words possess the precision of mathematical symbols, most statutes must deal with untold and unforeseen variations in factual situations, and the practical necessities of discharging the business of government inevitably limit the specificity with which legislators can spell out prohibitions. Consequently, no more than a reasonable degree of certainty can be demanded. Nor is it unfair to require that one who deliberately goes perilously close to an area of proscribed conduct shall take the risk that he may cross the line.””
69 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“do[] much to destroy any force in the argument that application of the [statute] would be so unfair that it must be held invalid,”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“into or through congested thoroughfares, places where crowds are assembled, street car tracks, tunnels, viaducts, and dangerous crossings.”
8 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.