Johnson v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
333 U.S. 10 · 1948
Citation profile
2,804 federal appellate · 366 district · 3,142 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 7,793 later decisions (366 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Terry v. Ohio (1968), Illinois v. Gates (1983)
2,804 federal appellate · 366 district · 3,142 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedJohnson v. United States (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Boyd v. United States · Weeks v. United States · Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States · United States v. Di Re
Cited together with Brinegar v. United States · Carroll v. United States · McDonald v. United States · United States v. Rabinowitz · United States v. Di Re
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 7,793 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.”
429 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"* * * the informed and deliberate determinations of magistrates empowered to issue warrants as to what searches and seizures are permissible under the Constitution are to be preferred over the hurried action of officers and others who may happen to make arrests. Security against unlawful searches is more likely to be attained by resort to search warrants than by reliance upon the caution and sagacity of petty officers while acting under the excitement that attends the capture of persons accused of crime."”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“fundamental distinctions between our form of government, where officers are under the law, and the police-state where they are the law.”
5 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.