United States v. Di Re’s Empirical Analysis
332 U.S. 581 · 1948
Citation profile
1,745 federal appellate · 156 district · 1,058 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,523 later decisions (92 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Terry v. Ohio (1968), Wong Sun v. United States (1963)
1,745 federal appellate · 156 district · 1,058 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedUnited States v. Di Re (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 591 · 28 U.S.C. § 504
Relies on Carroll v. United States · Byars v. United States · Husty v. United States · Bad Elk v. United States
Cited together with Johnson v. United States · Brinegar v. United States · Carroll v. United States · United States v. Rabinowitz · Henry 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 3,523 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We meet in this case, as in many, the appeal to necessity. It is said that if such arrests and searches cannot be made, law enforcement will be more difficult and uncertain. But the forefathers, after consulting the lessons of history, designed our Constitution to place obstacles in the way of a too permeating police surveillance, which they seemed to think was a greater danger to a free people than the escape of some criminals from punishment. Taking the law as it has been given to us, this arrest and search were beyond the lawful authority of those who executed them. The conviction based on evidence so obtained cannot stand.”
57 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“not convinced that a person, by mere presence in a suspected car, loses immunities from search of his person to which he would otherwise be entitled.”
17 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[I]n absence of an applicable federal statute the law of the state where an arrest without warrant takes place determines its validity.”
11 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.