Johnson v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
2000
Citation profile
215 federal appellate · 24 district · 61 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 639 later decisions (5 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Smith v. Doe (2003), Milavetz, Gallop & Milavetz, P. A. v. United States (2010)
215 federal appellate · 24 district · 61 state decisions — followed in 26 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 Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 1029 · 18 U.S.C. § 3553 · 18 U.S.C. § 3583 · 21 U.S.C. § 841 (§ 401 of the Controlled Substances Act)
Relies on United States v. Ron Pair Enterprises, Inc. · Landgraf v. USI Film Products · Immigration & Naturalization Service v. Cardoza-Fonseca · Gagnon v. Scarpelli · Caminetti v. United States
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 639 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“As it was written before the 1994 amendments, subsection (3) did not provide (as it now does) that the court could revoke the release term and require service of a prison term equal to the maxi mum authorized length of a term of supervised release. It provided, rather, that the court could “revoke a term of supervised release, and require the person to serve in prison all or part of the term of supervised release .So far as the text is concerned, it is not a “term of imprisonment” that is to be served, but all or part of “the term of supervised release.” But if “the term of supervised release” is being served, in whole or part, in prison, then something about the term of supervised release survives the preceding order of revocation. While this sounds very metaphysical, the metaphysics make one thing clear: unlike a “terminated” order of supervised release, one that is “revoked” continues to have some effect. And since it continues in some sense after revocation even when part of it is served in prison, why can the balance of it not remain effective as a term of supervised release when the reincarceration is over?”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(1) terminate a term of supervised release and discharge the defendant released ...; (2) extend a term of supervised release ... at any time prior to the expiration or termination of the term of supervised release ...; (3) revoke a term of supervised release, and require the defendant to serve in prison all or part of the term of supervised. release authorized by statute for the offense that resulted in such term of supervised release without credit for time previously served on postrelease supervision, if the court, pursuant to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure applicable to revocation of probation or supervised release, finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant violated a condition of supervised release.,..”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[a] violation of the terms of supervised release tends to confirm the judgment that help was necessary and if any prisoner might profit from the decompression stage of supervised release, no prisoner needs it more than one who has already tried liberty and failed.”
3 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.