State v. Bitterman’s Empirical Analysis
1975
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 22 later decisions — most recently October 2009
22 state decisions
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 Terry v. Ohio · Adams v. Williams · Sibron v. State of New York Peters · State v. Gannaway
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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[Wjhere a frisk is appropriate, the feeling of a hard object of substantial size, the precise shape or nature of which is not discernible through outer clothing, justifies the removal of that object. * * Since weapons are not always of an easily discernible shape, a mockery would be made of the right to frisk if the officers were required to positively ascertain that a felt object was a weapon prior to a removing it.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Hinkel
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.