Federal Communications Commission v. American Broadcasting Co.’s Empirical Analysis
1954
Citation profile
235 federal appellate · 24 district · 80 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 481 later decisions (36 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2023 · most notably Hj Inc v. Northwestern Bell Telephone Company (1989), Mourning v. Family Publications Service, Inc. (1973)
235 federal appellate · 24 district · 80 state decisions — followed in 19 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
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 1304 · 28 U.S.C. § 1336 · 47 U.S.C. § 154 · 47 U.S.C. § 303 (Local Community Radio Act of 2010) · 47 U.S.C. § 307 · 47 U.S.C. § 309 (Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005) · 47 U.S.C. § 312 · 47 U.S.C. § 402
Relies on National Broadcasting Co. v. United States · Southern Ss Co v. National Labor Relations Board · Stone v. Mississippi · United States v. Halseth
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 481 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“penal statutes are to be construed strictly,”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Enforcing such legislation has long been a difficult task. Law enforcement officers, federal and state, have been plagued with as many types of lotteries as the seemingly inexhaustible ingenuity of their promoters could devise in their efforts to cireumvent the law. When their schemes reached the courts, the decision, of necessity, usually turned on whether the scheme, on its own peculiar facts, constituted a lottery. So varied have been the techniques used by promoters to conceal the joint factors of prize, chance, and consideration, and so clever have they been in applying these techniques to feigned as well as legitimate business activities, that it has often been difficult to apply the decision of one case to the facts of another.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“any advertisement of or information concerning any lottery, gift enterprise, or similar scheme, offering prizes dependent in whole or in part upon lot or chance....”
4 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.