Kaplan v. California’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
186 federal appellate · 21 district · 308 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 686 later decisions (49 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2023 · most notably Hamling v. United States (1974), Marks v. United States (1977)
186 federal appellate · 21 district · 308 state decisions — followed in 39 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 Roth v. United States · Miller v. California · Freedman v. Maryland · Smith v. People of the State of California · Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton
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 686 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he defense should be free to introduce appropriate expert testimony”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“declared that obscenity is not a form of expression protected by the First Amendment, no distinction was made as to the medium of the expression. Obscenity can, of course, manifest itself in conduct, in the pictorial representation of conduct, or in the written and oral description of conduct. The Court has applied similarly conceived First Amendment standards to moving pictures, to photographs, and to words in books.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[P]ictures, films, paintings, drawings, and engravings... have First Amendment protection[.]”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.