United States v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis
864 F.2d 188 · 1988
Citation profile
26 federal appellate · 9 district · 8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 50 later decisions — most recently December 2016 · most notably 9 Cal. 4th 1069 - Tobe v. City of Santa Ana (1995), United States v. Lam Kwong-Wah (1991)
26 federal appellate · 9 district · 8 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
reviewedthe decision below (from District of Columbia District Court)
Relationships
Relies on Broadrick v. Oklahoma · Holland v. United States · Grayned v. City of Rockford · Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc. · Kolender v. Lawson
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 50 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“At the same time, we cannot forget that language is unavoidably inexact, and that statutes cannot, in reason, define proscribed behavior exhaustively or with consummate precision. These inherent limitations obtain in a speech-laden, First Amendment setting as in any other.... For this reason, courts do not require that an enactment touching on First Amendment interests set forth the precise line dividing proscribed from permitted behavior, or that a person contemplating a course of behavior know with certainty whether his or her act will be found to violate the proscription. Rather, even in this sensitive area the Due Process Clause requires that the enactment be drafted with reasonable specificity sufficient to provide fair notice.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]here are limitations in the English language with respect to being both specific and manageably brief, and it seems to us that although the prohibitions may not satisfy those intent on finding fault at any cost, they are set out in terms that the ordinary person exercising ordinary common sense can sufficiently understand and comply with, without sacrifice to the public interest.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'is to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, allowing the government the benefit of all reasonable inferences that may be drawn from the evidence, and permitting the [factfinder] to determine the weight and credibility of the evidence.'”
2 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.