United States v. Stevens’s Empirical Analysis
2010
Citation profile
469 federal appellate · 151 district · 398 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,583 later decisions (65 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Snyder v. Phelps (2011), New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen (2022)
469 federal appellate · 151 district · 398 state decisions — followed in 42 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
reviewedUnited States v. Stevens (from Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 48 · 7 U.S.C. § 2156
Relies on United States v. Salerno · Roth v. United States · Miller v. California · William Marbury v. James Madison · Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc.
Cited together with Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party · United States v. Williams · Broadrick v. Oklahoma · Ward v. Rock Against Racism · United States v. Salerno
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 1,583 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a substantial number of [a statute's] applications are unconstitutional, judged in relation to the statute's plainly legitimate sweep.”
41 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[T]he First Amendment protects against the Government; it does not leave us at the mercy of the noblesse oblige. We would not uphold an unconstitutional statute merely because the Government promised to use it responsibly.”
17 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem.”
12 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.