Brandenburg v. Ohio’s Empirical Analysis
1969
Citation profile
762 federal appellate · 172 district · 676 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,474 later decisions (152 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2025 · most notably Younger v. Harris (1971), Bell v. Wolfish (1979)
762 federal appellate · 172 district · 676 state decisions — followed in 41 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 United States v. O'Brien · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. State of Alabama Patterson · Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization · Keyishian v. Board of Regents of Univ. of State of NY · Speiser v. Randall
Cited together with Chaplinsky v. State of New Hampshire · New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Cohen v. California · Terminiello v. Chicago · United States v. O'Brien
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 2,474 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
111 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Neither the indictment nor the trial judge's instructions to the jury in any way refined the statute's bald definition of the crime in terms of mere advocacy not distinguished from incitement to imminent lawless action.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[the Ku Klux Klan is] not a revengent organization, but if our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race, it's possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken,”
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.