Carroll v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
267 U.S. 132 · 1925
Citation profile
5,097 federal appellate · 847 district · 6,863 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 15,080 later decisions (385 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Terry v. Ohio (1968), Wong Sun v. United States (1963)
5,097 federal appellate · 847 district · 6,863 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 Brinegar v. United States · United States v. Rabinowitz · Agnello v. United States · Johnson v. United States · Weeks 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 15,080 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“where it is not practicable to secure a warrant because the vehicle can be quickly moved out of the locality or jurisdiction in which the warrant must be sought.”
245 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief”
152 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The right to search and the validity of the seizure are not dependent on the right to arrest. They are dependent on the reasonable cause the seizing officer has for belief that the contents of the automobile offend against the law.”
55 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.