Pope v. Illinois’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
422 federal appellate · 26 district · 504 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,158 later decisions (35 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2025 · most notably Arizona v. Fulminante (1991), Johnson v. United States (1997)
422 federal appellate · 26 district · 504 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 Jackson v. Virginia · Chapman v. State of California · Delaware v. Van Arsdall · Grayned v. City of Rockford · Connally v. General Construction Co.
Cited together with Rose v. Clark · Chapman v. State of California · Carella v. California · Sullivan v. Louisiana · Arizona v. Fulminante
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 1,158 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In these circumstances, there is no reason to order retrials if it can be said beyond a reasonable doubt that the convictions in these cases were not affected by the erroneous wording of the statute. An otherwise valid conviction should not be set aside if the reviewing court may confidently say, on the whole record, that the constitutional error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”
26 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“For material to be obscene, it must be shown that the average person applying contemporary community standards when viewing the material as a whole would find, first, that the work appeals to the prurient interest; second, that it depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way; and third, that the material lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”
18 later decisions quote this exact passage““Any material or performance is obscene if: (1) the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards, would find that, taken as a whole, it appeals to the prurient interest; and (2) the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards, would find that it depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, ultimate sexual acts or sadomasochistic sexual acts, whether normal or perverted, actual or simulated, or masturbation, excretory functions or lewd exhibition of the genitals; and (3) taken as a whole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.” Ill. Rev. Stat. 1987, ch. 38, par. 11 — 20(b).”
8 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.