Lopez v. Gonzales’s Empirical Analysis
2006
Citation profile
310 federal appellate · 23 district · 19 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,129 later decisions (32 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2024 · most notably Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder (2010), Moncrieffe v. Holder (2013)
310 federal appellate · 23 district · 19 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
reviewedLopez v. Gonzales (from Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 3559 · 18 U.S.C. § 924 · 21 U.S.C. § 801 (§ 101 of the Controlled Substances Act) · 21 U.S.C. § 802 (§ 102 of the Controlled Substances Act) · 21 U.S.C. § 844 (§ 404 of the Controlled Substances Act) · 8 U.S.C. § 1101 (§ 101 of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (McCarran-Walter)) · 8 U.S.C. § 1227 (§ 237 of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (McCarran-Walter)) · 8 U.S.C. § 1229B (§ 240a of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (McCarran-Walter))
Relies on Duncan v. Walker · Russello v. United States · Federal Deposit Insurance v. Meyer · Leocal v. Ashcroft · George Duncan Superintendent Great Meadow Correctional Facility v. Sherman Walker
Cited together with Taylor v. United States · Shepard v. United States · Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder · Almendarez-Torres v. United States · Apprendi v. New Jersey
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 1,129 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“illicit trafficking in a controlled substance”
13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Those state possession crimes that correspond to felony violations of one of the three statutes enumerated in § 924(c)(2), such as ... recidivist possession, see 21 U.S.C. § 844 (a), clearly fall within the definitions used by Congress in 8 U.S.C. § 1101 (a)(43)(B) and 18 U.S.C. § 924 (c)(2), regardless of whether these federal possession felonies or their state counterparts constitute “illicit trafficking in a controlled substance” or “drug trafficking” as those terms are used in ordinary speech.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A] state offense constitutes a `felony punishable under the Controlled Substances Act' only if it proscribes conduct punishable as a felony under that federal law.”
8 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.