Smith v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
190 federal appellate · 19 district · 220 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 531 later decisions (30 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2024 · most notably Central Hudson Gas Electric Corporation v. Public Service Commission of New York (1980), New York v. Ferber (1982)
190 federal appellate · 19 district · 220 state decisions — followed in 29 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedUnited States v. McManus (from Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Hamling v. United States · Roth v. United States · Village of Euclid Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co · Miller v. California · Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc.
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 531 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“that contemporary community standards must be applied by juries in accordance with their own understanding of the tolerance of the average person in their community....”
13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(a) . . . 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest . . .; (b) . . . the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) . . . the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The second prong to be applied in determining whether material is obscene, is whether it depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way. Examples of sexual conduct would include ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated; masturbation; excretory functions or lewd exhibition of the genitals. In making this judgment, you must measure whether the material is patently offensive by contemporary community standards; that is, whether it so exceeds the limits of what the adult community will accept as to be patently offensive.”
4 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.