Jacobellis v. Ohio’s Empirical Analysis
1964
Citation profile
457 federal appellate · 97 district · 934 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,223 later decisions (117 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Jackson v. Virginia (1979), Connick v. Myers (1983)
457 federal appellate · 97 district · 934 state decisions — followed in 47 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
Relies on Universal Camera Corp. v. National Labor Relations Board · New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Napue v. People of the State of Illinois · Ker v. State of California · Massiah v. United States
Cited together with Roth v. United States · Book Named 'John Cleland's Memoirs of Woman of Pleasure' v. Attorney General of Commonwealth of Massachusetts · Miller v. California · Ginzburg v. United States · Redrup v. State of New York
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 2,223 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”
58 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence““[Wjhether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest.” Jacobellis v. State of Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 , 191, 84 S.Ct. 1676 , 1680, 12 L.Ed.2d 793 (1964); Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 , 489, 77 S.Ct. 1304 , 1 L.Ed.2d 1498 (1957).”
20 later decisions quote this exact passage“* * * the constitutional limits of free expression in the Nation would vary with state lines.”
13 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.