Bates v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1997
Citation profile
204 federal appellate · 44 district · 17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 517 later decisions (24 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2026 · most notably Bousley v. United States (1998), Begay v. United States (2008)
204 federal appellate · 44 district · 17 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. Bates (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Russello v. United States · United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co. · Ratzlaf et Ux United States · New Jersey v. New York · Town of Mashpee v. Mashpee Tribe
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 517 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Where Congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another section of the same Act, it is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally and purposefully in the disparate inclusion or exclusion.”
23 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[W]e ordinarily resist reading words or elements into a statute that do not appear on its face.”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“ordinarily resist[ ] reading words into a statute that do not appear on its face.”
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.