Ashcroft Attorney General v. American Civil Liberties Union et al.’s Empirical Analysis
2002
Citation profile
110 federal appellate · 56 district · 127 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 475 later decisions (14 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably United States v. Stevens (2010), Ashcroft Attorney General v. American Civil Liberties Union et al. (2004)
110 federal appellate · 56 district · 127 state decisions — followed in 24 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
reviewedAmerican Civil Liberties Union v. Reno (from Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 1461 · 18 U.S.C. § 3237 · 47 U.S.C. § 223 · 47 U.S.C. § 230 (Communications Decency Act § 230) · 47 U.S.C. § 231
Relies on Almendarez-Torres v. United States · Broadrick v. Oklahoma · Hamling v. United States · Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority · Roth 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 475 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A]s a general matter, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.”
20 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
2 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.