Rathbun v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1958
Citation profile
391 federal appellate · 35 district · 205 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 733 later decisions (14 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2015 · most notably Lopez v. United States (1963), Carbo v. United States (1963)
391 federal appellate · 35 district · 205 state decisions — followed in 29 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
reviewedRathbun v. United States (from Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Nardone v. United States · Olmstead v. United States · Rector Etc of Holy Trinity Church v. United States · Nardone 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 733 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The communication itself is not privileged, and one party may not force the other to secrecy merely by using a telephone.”
24 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““(N)o person not being authorized by the sender shall intercept any communication and divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such intercepted communication to any person.””
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Every statute must be interpreted in the light of reason and common understanding to reach the results intended by the legislature.”
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.