Hester v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
265 U.S. 57 · 1924
Citation profile
715 federal appellate · 134 district · 1,145 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,431 later decisions (102 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2025 · most notably Katz v. United States (1967), Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics (1971)
715 federal appellate · 134 district · 1,145 state decisions — followed in 49 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 Taubel-Scott-Kitzmiller Co. v. Fox
Cited together with Katz v. United States · Oliver v. United States · Jones v. United States · Boyd v. United States · Carroll 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 2,431 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their 'persons, houses, papers, and effects,' is not extended to the open fields. The distinction between the latter and the house is as old as the common law.”
57 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The protection of the Fourth Amendment securing people in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable search and seizure does not apply to `open fields.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.