Massachusetts v. Oakes’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
92 federal appellate · 19 district · 99 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 318 later decisions (10 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Osborne v. Ohio (1990), National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley (1998)
92 federal appellate · 19 district · 99 state decisions — followed in 22 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 Broadrick v. Oklahoma · Miller v. California · Dombrowski v. Pfister · New York v. Ferber · Members of the City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent
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 318 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“an exception to the general rule that a person to whom a statute may be constitutionally applied cannot challenge the statute on the grounds that it may be unconstitutionally applied to others.” Massachusetts v. Oakes, 491 U.S. 576 , 581, 109 S.Ct. 2633 , 105 L.Ed.2d 493 (1989). 6 . Although it is not at issue in this case, the statute makes clear that the government must also prove”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage““The overbreadth doctrine serves to protect constitutionally legitimate speech not merely ex post, that is, after the offending statute is enacted, but also ex ante, that is, when the legislature is contemplating what sort of statute to enact. If the promulgation of overbroad laws affecting speech was cost free, as Justice O’Connor’s new doctrine would make it — that is, if no conviction of constitutionally proscribable conduct would be lost, so long as the offending statute was narrowed before the final appeal — then legislatures would have significantly reduced incentive to stay within constitutional bounds in the first place” (emphasis in original).”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“is predicated on the danger that an overly broad statute, if left in place, may cause persons whose expression is constitutionally protected to refrain from exercising their rights for fear of criminal sanctions.” Massachusetts v. Oakes, 491 U.S. 576, 581 , 109 S.Ct. 2633 , 105 L.Ed.2d 493 (1989). .”
3 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.