Miller v. California’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
1,320 federal appellate · 271 district · 2,341 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5,402 later decisions (371 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Buckley v. Valeo (1976), Hamling v. United States (1974)
1,320 federal appellate · 271 district · 2,341 state decisions — followed in 49 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 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · United States v. O'Brien · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. Y Button · Roth v. United States
Cited together with Roth v. United States · Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton · Hamling v. United States · New York v. Ferber · United States v. 12 200-Ft. Reels of Super 8MM. Film
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 5,402 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the average person, applying contemporary community standards”
376 later decisions quote this exact passage“(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
128 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“no one will be subject to prosecution for the sale or exposure of obscene materials unless these materials depict or describe patently offensive 'hard core' sexual conduct....”
35 later decisions 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.