Stephens v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
41 F.2d 440 · 1930
Citation profile
21 federal appellate ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 26 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 1981 · most notably Parr v. United States (1960), United States v. Read (1981)
21 federal appellate ·
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 Hyde v. United States · Burton v. Driggs · Stokes v. United States · Brady v. United States · Horn v. United States
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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In respect of the question whether such use of the mails was in the `execution' of the `scheme' to defraud, defendants' position is, in the main, that the business conducted by them is not shown to have been wholly fraudulent, in all of its branches, and that the mailings were made in the promotion of the lawful features, or at least that the evidence fails to show any connection with those branches which were promoted by deception and false pretenses. But direct connection was not requisite. The business was a single general enterprise, and a lawful activity in the course thereof might very well have made a material contribution to the success of another activity illegitimate in its purpose or fraudulent in the means used in carrying it forward. * * * If fraudulent in important and continuing branches of its activities, the enterprise as a whole may properly be characterized as a fraudulent scheme.”
1 later decision 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.