Colten v. Commonwealth of Kentucky’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
406 federal appellate · 79 district · 1,253 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,144 later decisions (77 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Broadrick v. Oklahoma (1973), Bordenkircher v. Hayes (1978)
406 federal appellate · 79 district · 1,253 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 North Carolina v. Pearce · Griffin v. California · Griffin v. People of the State of Illinois · Connally v. General Construction Co. · Duncan v. State of Louisiana
Cited together with North Carolina v. Pearce · Chaffin v. Stynchcombe · Blackledge v. Perry · Connally v. General Construction Co. · Broadrick v. Oklahoma
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 2,144 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The root of the vagueness doctrine is a rough idea of fairness. It is not a principle designed to convert into a constitutional dilemma the practical difficulties in drawing criminal statutes both general enough to take into account a variety of human conduct and sufficiently specific to provide fair warning that certain kinds of conduct are prohibited.”
79 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“asked to do over what it thought it had already done correctly.”
49 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"(1) A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if, with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he: ...... "(f) Congregates with other persons in a public place and refuses to comply with a lawful order of the police to disperse... ." 407 U.S. 104, 108 , 92 S.Ct. 1953, 1956 , 32 L.Ed.2d 584, 589 .”
13 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.