Case Citator › Blockburger v. United States

Blockburger v. United States

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Limited by some courts
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
284 U.S. 299
Decided
Confirmed treatments
2
Flagged citations read
436 of 436
Citing cases (total)
10,620
Treatment dates
1987–2024
Limited by some courts
At least one reviewed court has limited this case’s holding to narrower facts or a narrower rule. No reviewed court has overruled it. Blockburger v. United States remains binding but is limited in military-justice multiplicity cases: all 436 flagged citations have been read, and the 2 confirmed treatments are listed below. United States v. Jones rejected Blockburger as the exclusive military multiplicity test, and United States v. Driskill disregarded jurisdictional elements when comparing a prior Title 18 prosecution with a later Article 134 charge.
More on how this was screened

The other opinions applied Blockburger's same-elements rule, reported its treatment of older precedent, rejected adverse arguments, or directed nearby treatment language at objections and unrelated authorities.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

10,620 later cases cite Blockburger v. United States; 436 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Blockburger v. United States?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Limited

  • The Court of Military Appeals held that Blockburger is not the sole military multiplicity test and retained the broader Baker “fairly embraced” inquiry for lesser-included offenses.

    United States v. Jones · United States Court of Military Appeals · filed

    Finally, the intermediate court’s simplistic embrace of the “Blockburger” rule ignores significant problems concerning its propriety as the sole test for determining double-jeopardy claims, particularly in the context of a jurisdiction’s law defining a lesser-included offense.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

  • The Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces held that jurisdictional elements are disregarded under Blockburger when comparing an earlier Title 18 prosecution with a later Article 134 charge arising from the same conduct.

    United States v. Driskill · United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces · filed

    It is true, and both parties agree, that a strict application of the Blockburger test, unaffected by this Court’s decision in Rice, would indicate that these are different offenses because each offense contains an element that the other does not. ... And when the jurisdictional elements are disregarded, the § 1466A offense charged at the first trial no longer “requires proof of a fact which the [offense charged at the second trial] does not.” Blockburger, 284 U.S. at 304. Accordingly, following Rice, we must conclude that trying Appellant for the offense under Article 134, UCMJ, at the second court-martial violated the prohibition against double jeopardy.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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