Case Citator › Begay v. United States

Begay 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
553 U.S. 137
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
238 of 238
Citing cases (total)
1,437
Treatment dates
2011
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. Begay v. United States was limited by the Supreme Court's later decision in Sykes v. United States; the confirmed treatment is listed below. All 238 flagged citations have been read.
More on how this was screened

Sykes confined Begay's “purposeful, violent, and aggressive” inquiry to crimes akin to strict liability, negligence, and recklessness offenses. The Supreme Court later invalidated the Armed Career Criminal Act's residual clause in Johnson v. United States (2015) and expressly overruled Sykes's contrary judgment, while continuing to cite Begay's categorical approach. Most other opinions applied Begay, reported a different court's action, or rejected a party's proposed reading of it.

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.

1,437 later cases cite Begay v. United States; 238 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 Begay 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 Supreme Court treated risk as the usual measure under the Armed Career Criminal Act's residual clause and confined Begay's additional inquiry to crimes akin to strict liability, negligence, and recklessness offenses.

    Sykes v. United States · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    As between the two inquiries, risk levels provide a categorical and manageable standard that suffices to resolve the case before us. Begay involved a crime akin to strict-liability, negligence, and recklessness crimes; and the purposeful, violent, and aggressive formulation was used in that case to explain the result.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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