Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
500 federal appellate · 121 district · 266 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,460 later decisions (35 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Powers v. Ohio (1991), Nordlinger v. Hahn (1992)
500 federal appellate · 121 district · 266 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedUnited States v. Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered (from Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 3006A (Criminal Justice Act) · 18 U.S.C. § 3142 (Bail Reform Act of 1984) · 18 U.S.C. § 3681 · 21 U.S.C. § 848 (§ 408 of the Controlled Substances Act) · 21 U.S.C. § 853 (§ 413 of the Controlled Substances Act) · 26 U.S.C. § 6861 · 28 U.S.C. § 524
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Faretta v. California · Gideon v. Wainwright · Brady v. United States · Powell v. State of Alabama Patterson
Cited together with United States v. Monsanto · Wheat v. United States · United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez · Strickland v. Washington · Morris v. Slappy
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 1,460 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Petitioner does not, nor could it defensibly do so, assert that impecunious defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to choose their counsel. The Amendment guarantees defendants in criminal cases the right to adequate representation, but those who do not have the means to hire their own lawyers have no cognizable complaint so long as they are adequately represented by attorneys appointed by the courts.”
21 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[a] defendant has no Sixth Amendment right to spend another person's money for services rendered by an attorney, even if those funds are the only way that that defendant will be able to retain the attorney of his choice.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage“A robbery suspect, for example, has no Sixth Amendment right to use funds he has stolen from a bank to retain an attorney to defend him if he is apprehended. The money, though in his possession, is not rightfully his; the Government does not violate the Sixth Amendment if it seizes the robbery proceeds and refuses to permit the defendant to use them to pay for his defense.”
9 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.