Williams v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1992
Citation profile
2,002 federal appellate · 30 district · 21 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,103 later decisions (9 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably United States v. Booker (2004), Rita v. United States (2007)
2,002 federal appellate · 30 district · 21 state decisions
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. Williams (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Solem v. Helm · Gore v. United States · Nicholas v. United States · Kuntz v. City of Dayton
Cited together with Koon v. United States · United States v. Booker · Stinson v. United States · United States v. Olano · Blakely v. Washington
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 3,103 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a remand is appropriate unless the reviewing court concludes, on the record as a whole, that the error was harmless, i.e., that the error did not affect the district court's selection of the sentence imposed.”
200 later decisions quote this exact passage“it is not the role of an appellate court to substitute its judgment for that of the sentencing court as to the appropriateness of a particular sentence.”
15 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“finds that there exists an aggravating or mitigating circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission in formulating the guidelines that should result in a sentence different from that described.”
13 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.