Case Citator › United States v. Johnson

United States v. Johnson

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

Overruled in part
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
457 U.S. 537
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
137 of 137
Citing cases (total)
1,036
Treatment dates
1987
Overruled in part
A reviewed court has overruled part of this case’s holding. All 137 flagged citations for United States v. Johnson have been read, and the confirmed treatment is listed below. Griffith v. Kentucky overruled Johnson's “clear break” exception while preserving its broader rule that new criminal-procedure decisions apply to cases pending on direct review.
More on how this was screened

Later lower courts reporting Griffith's act produced no duplicate entries. Harper v. Virginia Department of Taxation changed civil retroactivity, an area Johnson expressly reserved, and did not adversely treat Johnson's criminal holding. Other nearby adverse language concerned unrelated cases, and withdrawn opinions produced no entries.

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.

1,036 later cases cite United States v. Johnson; 137 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 United States v. Johnson?

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

Overruled in Part

  • The Supreme Court overruled Johnson's exception for new criminal-procedure rules that constituted a “clear break” with prior precedent, requiring all new rules to apply to criminal cases still pending on direct review.

    Griffith v. Kentucky · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    We therefore hold that a new rule for the conduct of criminal prosecutions is to be applied retroactively to all cases, state or federal, pending on direct review or not yet final, with no exception for cases in which the new rule constitutes a “clear break” with the past.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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