Staples v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1994
Citation profile
1,013 federal appellate · 103 district · 550 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,313 later decisions (73 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Almendarez-Torres v. United States (1998), Old Chief v. United States (1997)
1,013 federal appellate · 103 district · 550 state decisions — followed in 40 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
reviewedthe decision below (from Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 3559 · 26 U.S.C. § 5845 (§ 201 of the Gun Control Act of 1968) · 26 U.S.C. § 5861 (§ 201 of the Gun Control Act of 1968)
Relies on Morissette v. United States · Connecticut National Bank v. Germain · Cannon v. University of Chicago · Miller v. California · United States v. Bass
Cited together with Morissette v. United States · United States v. X-Citement Video, Inc. · Liparota v. United States · District of Columbia v. Heller · United States v. Freed
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 2,313 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Despite their potential for harm, guns generally can be owned in perfect innocence.”
23 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“criminalize a broad range of apparently innocent conduct.”
19 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“silence [regarding the required mental element of the offense] by itself does not necessarily suggest that Congress intended to dispense with a conventional mens rea element.”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.