Rogers v. Bellei’s Empirical Analysis
1971
Citation profile
87 federal appellate · 14 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 189 later decisions (12 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Mohamed Abdille v. John Ashcroft, Attorney General of the United States (2001), Miller v. Albright (1998)
87 federal appellate · 14 district · 6 state decisions
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
reviewedthe decision below (from District of Columbia District Court)
Relationships
Relies on Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez · Osborn v. President Directors and Company of the Bank of the United States · Slaughter-House Cases the Butchers' Benevolent Association of New Orleans v. The Crescent City Live · Wyman v. James · United States v. Wong Kim Ark
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 189 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“born or naturalized in the United States.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“. . . convert what is congressional generosity into something unanticipated and obviously undesired by the Congress. Our National Legislature indulged the foreign-born child with presumptive citizenship, subject to subsequent satisfaction of a reasonable residence requirement, rather than to deny him citizenship outright, as concededly it had the power to do, and relegate the child, if he desired American citizenship, to the more arduous requirements of the usual naturalization process. The plaintiff here would force the Congress to choose between unconditional conferment of United States citizenship at birth and deferment of citizenship until a condition precedent is fulfilled. We are not convinced that the Constitution requires so rigid a choice. If it does, the congressional response seems obvious.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Icaza v. Shultz · Rucker v. Saxbe“Any child hereafter born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such child is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States; but the rights of citizenship shall not descend to any such child unless the citizen father or citizen mother, as the case may be, has resided in the United States previous to the birth of such child. In cases where one of the parents is an alien, the right of citizenship shall not descend unless the child comes to the United States and resides therein for at least five years continuously immediately previous to his eighteenth birthday, and unless, within six months after the child's twenty-first birthday, he or she shall take an oath of allegiance to the United States of America as prescribed by the Bureau of Naturalization.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.