Burdeau v. McDowell’s Empirical Analysis
256 U.S. 465 · 1921
Citation profile
812 federal appellate · 122 district · 1,192 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,602 later decisions (108 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2026 · most notably Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera (1966), Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics (1971)
812 federal appellate · 122 district · 1,192 state decisions — followed in 50 states
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.
Relationships
Relies on Boyd v. United States · Weeks v. United States · Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States · Gouled v. United States
Cited together with Weeks v. United States · Coolidge v. New Hampshire · Katz v. United States · Byars v. United States · Lustig v. United States
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 2,602 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The Fourth Amendment gives protection against unlawful searches and seizures, and as shown in the previous cases, its protection applies to governmental action. Its origin and history clearly show that it was intended as a restraint upon the activities of sovereign authority, and was not intended to be a limitation upon other than governmental agencies; as against such authority it was the purpose of the Fourth Amendment to secure the citizen in the right of unmolested occupation of his dwelling and the possession of his property, subject to the right of seizure by process duly issued.”
44 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Respect for law will not be advanced by resort, in its enforcement, to means which shock the common man's sense of decency and fair play.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““That on or about the 17th day of December, 1942, defendant R. B. Hood and each of the other defendants, unlawfully conspired with each other to act beyond their authority as said Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and police officer respectively, and agreed that they would abridge the Constitutional rights of the plaintiffs as guaranteed by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States to be free from the deprivation of liberty and property without due process of law, and to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and agreed unlawfully to simultaneously, in the early morning of December 18th, 1942, search the homes of. the individual plaintiffs herein without any warrants of search or seizure, and unlawfully to seize the papers, documents and effects of said plaintiffs and of ‘Mankind United/ and falsely to imprison the individual plaintiffs by unlawfully arresting some of the individual plaintiffs without a warrant of arrest and unreasonably to delay the taking of all of the individual plaintiffs before a committing officer, in order to effectuate the unlawful searches and seizures aforesaid. “That thereafter, and on the 18th day of December, 1942, . . . the defendants and each of them, in order to carry out the terms and conditions of the illegal conspiracy aforesaid, and solely for the purpose of carrying out said terms and conditions, did arrest and imprison the individual plaintiffs herein, and did search the homes of said plainti”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Bell v. Hood
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.