Wolf v. People of the State of Colorado’s Empirical Analysis
338 U.S. 25 · 1949
Citation profile
906 federal appellate · 194 district · 1,134 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,955 later decisions (284 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera (1966), Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York (1978)
906 federal appellate · 194 district · 1,134 state decisions — followed in 49 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. A case is still cited after being overruled — to note the reversal, distinguish it, or in dissent. 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 · McNabb v. United States · Olmstead v. United States
Cited together with Mapp v. Ohio · Weeks v. United States · Elkins v. United States · Rochin v. People of California · Johnson 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 2,955 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The security of one's privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police--which is at the core of the Fourth Amendment--is basic to a free society.”
25 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“`* * * we have no hesitation in saying that were a State affirmatively to sanction such police incursion into privacy it would run counter to the guaranty of the Fourteenth Amendment.' Wolf v. People of State of Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 , 28, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 93 L.Ed. 1782.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Due process of law * * * conveys neither formal nor fixed on narrow requirements. It is the compendious expression for all those rights which the courts must enforce because they are basic to our free society.”
8 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.