Lamont v. Postmaster General’s Empirical Analysis
1965
Citation profile
317 federal appellate · 89 district · 82 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 923 later decisions (96 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2025 · most notably Buckley v. Valeo (1976), San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973)
317 federal appellate · 89 district · 82 state decisions — followed in 15 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 22 U.S.C. § 611 (Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938)
Relies on New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Boyd v. United States · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. Y Button · Bolling v. Sharpe · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. State of Alabama Patterson
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 923 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It would be a barren marketplace of ideas that had only sellers and no buyers.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“almost as much a part of free speech as the right to use our tongues.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“carries an affirmative obligation which we do not think the Government may impose on him.”
6 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.