Virginia v. American Booksellers Assn., Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
640 federal appellate · 259 district · 121 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,818 later decisions (42 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2026 · most notably Rav v. City of St Paul Minnesota (1992), Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona (1997)
640 federal appellate · 259 district · 121 state decisions — followed in 23 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
reviewedAmerican Booksellers Ass'n v. Commonwealth of Virginia (from Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2403 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Warth v. Seldin · Broadrick v. Oklahoma · Association of Data Processing Service Organizations, Inc. v. Camp · Miller v. California · Craig v. Boren
Cited together with Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife · Babbitt v. United Farm Workers National Union · Broadrick v. Oklahoma · Warth v. Seldin · Secretary of State of Maryland v. Joseph H Munson Company 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 1,818 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]e will not rewrite a state law to conform it to constitutional requirements.”
58 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“alleged an actual and well-founded fear that the law will be enforced against them.”
39 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“a harm that can be realized even without an actual prosecution”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.