McNally v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
1,847 federal appellate · 213 district · 75 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,063 later decisions (74 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2025 · most notably Buckhannon Board and Care Home Incs v. West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (2001), Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio (1989)
1,847 federal appellate · 213 district · 75 state decisions — followed in 18 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. Gray (from Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Glasser v. United States · United States v. Bass · California State Board of Equalization v. Western Marina Corp. · Reiter v. Sonotone Corp.
Cited together with Carpenter v. United States · Hammerschmidt v. United States · Jackson v. Virginia · Pereira v. United States · Schmuck 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 3,063 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“limited in scope to the protection of property rights.”
101 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises.”
43 later decisions quote this exact passage“Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, ... for the purpose of executing such scheme ... [takes or receives] any matter or thing whatever to be sent or delivered by the Postal Service ... shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”
40 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.