Annenberg v. Roberts’s Empirical Analysis
1938
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 77 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 82 later decisions — most recently June 2001 · most notably Archbishop O'Hara's Appeal (1957), Snider v. Thornburgh (1981)
3 federal appellate · 77 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 Boyd v. United States · Kilbourn v. Thompson · Interstate Commerce Commission v. Brimson · Federal Trade Commission v. American Tobacco Co. · McGrain v. Daugherty
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 82 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It would seem scarcely necessary to marshal authorities to establish, as a proposition of constitutional law, that a witness cannot be compelled, under the guise of a legislative study of conditions bearing upon proposed legislation, to reveal his private and personal affairs, except to the extent to which such disclosure is reasonably required for the general purpose of the inquiry---The question in each instance, therefore, is whether the compulsory production of private papers is an unreasonable search and seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment of the Federal Constitution, U.S.C.A. Const. Amend. 4, or of Article 1, section 8 of the State Constitution, P.S.Const. art. 1, § 8, and this depends upon the relevancy of the testimony which is sought, for it is uniformly held that a legislative body is not invested with any general power to inquire into private affairs and to compel disclosures but only with such limited right of inquiry as is pertinent to the obtaining of information upon which proposed legislation is to be based. None of the rights of the individual citizen has been more eloquently depicted and defended in the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States than the right of personal privacy as against unlimited and unreasonable legislative or other governmental investigations.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The subpoenas show on their face that they contemplate an unreasonable search and seizure. They violate the principle which we announced in American Car & Foundry Co. v. Alexandria Water Co., 221 Pa. 529 , where we held that a subpoena duces tecum could not properly be issued to bring in a mass of books and papers in order that there might be a search through them to gather evidence. . .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““ ‘A title need name only the real subject of the legislation ; it need not set forth all enactments intended to be made in regard thereto. If the subject is designated with sufficient clearness to put one on inquiry into the body of the act, all necessary or appropriate details to carry out the purpose of the statute there found will be treated as within the title’ ”.”
1 later decision 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.