Heath v. Alabama’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
398 federal appellate · 90 district · 385 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,252 later decisions (27 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2026 · most notably Koon v. United States (1996), United States v. Dixon (1993)
398 federal appellate · 90 district · 385 state decisions — followed in 38 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 Illinois v. Gates · Santobello v. New York · Benton v. Maryland · Brown v. Ohio · Elkins v. United States
Cited together with Bartkus v. People of State of Illinois · United States v. Lanza · Abbate v. United States · United States v. Wheeler · Blockburger 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 1,252 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[E]ach government in determining what shall be an offense against its peace and dignity is exercising its own sovereignty, not that of the other. It follows that an act denounced as a crime by both national and state sovereignties is an offense against the peace and dignity of both and may be punished by each.”
48 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“When a defendant in a single act violates the 'peace and dignity' of two sovereigns by breaking the laws of each, he has committed two distinct 'offences.'”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage“a single act constitutes an `offense' against each sovereign whose laws are violated by that act.”
7 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.