Helstoski v. Meanor’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
662 federal appellate · 33 district · 64 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,006 later decisions (38 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2026 · most notably Mitchell v. Forsyth (1985), Behrens v. Pelletier (1996)
662 federal appellate · 33 district · 64 state decisions — followed in 11 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. Henry Helstoski. Henry Helstoski v. United States of America, Honorable H. Curtis Meanor, United States District Judge, Nominal (from Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 201 (Bank Bribery Amendments) · 18 U.S.C. § 371
Relies on Brady v. State of Maryland · Kerr v. United States Dist. Court for Northern Dist. of Cal. · Abney v. United States · United States v. Brewster
Cited together with Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp. · Abney v. United States · Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay · United States v. MacDonald · Stack v. Boyle
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 1,006 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[F]or any speech or debate in either House, [members of Congress] shall not be questioned in any other Place.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“'(t)he general principle which governs proceedings by mandamus is, that whatever can be done without the employment of that extraordinary writ, may not be done with it.'”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“if a criminal defendant is to avoid exposure to double jeopardy and thereby enjoy the full protection of the Clause, his double jeopardy challenge to the indictment must be reviewable before that subsequent exposure occurs.”
4 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.