United States v. Santos’s Empirical Analysis
553 U.S. 507 · 2008
Citation profile
559 federal appellate · 89 district · 96 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,401 later decisions (5 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2026 · most notably United States v. Cooks (2009), Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (2010)
559 federal appellate · 89 district · 96 state decisions — followed in 19 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 Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 1341 (White-Collar Crime Penalty Enhancement Act of 2002) · 18 U.S.C. § 1955 · 18 U.S.C. § 1956 (§ 1352 of the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986) · 18 U.S.C. § 1963 (§ 901 of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) · 18 U.S.C. § 371 · 18 U.S.C. § 981 (§ 1366 of the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986) · 21 U.S.C. § 848 (§ 408 of the Controlled Substances Act) · 21 U.S.C. § 853 (§ 413 of the Controlled Substances Act)
Relies on United States v. Booker · Neder v. United States · United Sav. Assn. of Tex. v. Timbers of Inwood Forest Associates, Ltd. · Marks v. United States · United States v. Bass
Cited together with Marks v. United States · Jackson v. Virginia · Gall v. United States · United States v. Booker · United States v. Olano
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 1,401 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The rule of lenity requires ambiguous criminal laws to be interpreted in favor of the defendants subjected to them.”
61 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“(a)(1) [¶]... ] knowing that the property involved in a financial transaction represents the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, conducts or attempts to conduct such a financial transaction which in fact involves the proceeds of specified unlawful activity— (A)(i) with the intent to promote the carrying on of specified unlawful activity; or [...] (B) knowing that the transaction is designed in whole or in part- (i) to conceal or disguise the nature, the location, the source, the ownership, or the control of the proceeds of specified unlawful activity; ...”
17 later decisions quote this exact passage“The revenue generated by a gambling business that is used to pay the essential expenses of operating that business is not “proceeds” within the meaning of the money laundering statute. As the plurality notes, there is “no explanation for why Congress would have wanted a transaction that is a normal part of a crime it had duly considered and appropriately punished elsewhere in the Crim inal Code, to radically increase the sentence for that crime.” This conclusion dovetails with what common sense and the rule of lenity would require.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.