misdemeanor
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 215 U.S. 190 - United States v. Stevenson · 1909Most cited · 158 citing opinions
This term 'misdemeanor' has been generally understood to mean the lower grade of criminal offense as distinguished from a felony. It is true that the term has often been used in the statutes of the United States without strict regard to its common-law meaning, and sometimes to describe offenses of a high grade, which have been declared in the statutes to be misdemeanors.
How often courts cite the cases defining “misdemeanor”
Court decisions citing the 2 opinions that defined “misdemeanor” — 260 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 2 definitions, chronological · 1909–1937
All other offenses [not punishable by death or imprisonment for a term exceeding one year] shall be deemed misdemeanors.