Printz v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1997
Citation profile
554 federal appellate · 152 district · 157 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,506 later decisions (66 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably John Aldens v. Maine (1999), College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board (1999)
554 federal appellate · 152 district · 157 state decisions — followed in 28 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 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York · Will v. Michigan Department of State Police · United States v. Lopez · William Marbury v. James Madison · M'Culloch v. State of Maryland
Cited together with New York v. United States · United States v. Lopez · South Dakota v. Dole · Gregory v. Ashcroft · Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife
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 1,506 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States' officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.”
36 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
36 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“The Federal Government may not compel the States to enact or administer a federal regulatory program.”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.