Lustig v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
338 U.S. 74 · 1949
Citation profile
573 federal appellate · 48 district · 255 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,062 later decisions (40 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Mapp v. Ohio (1961), United States v. O'Brien (1968)
573 federal appellate · 48 district · 255 state decisions — followed in 31 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedUnited States v. Lustig (from Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Johnson v. United States · Weeks v. United States · Wolf v. People of the State of Colorado · Byars v. United States · Trupiano v. United States
Cited together with Byars v. United States · Weeks v. United States · Burdeau v. McDowell · Elkins v. United States · United States v. Jeffers
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 1,062 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'is the actuality of a share by a federal official in the total enterprise of securing and selecting evidence by other than sanctioned means.'”
35 later decisions quote this exact passage““While it is true that the mere participation in a state search of one who is a federal officer does not render it a federal undertaking, the court must be vigilant to scrutinize the attendant facts with an eye to detect and a hand to prevent violations of the Constitution by circuitous and indirect methods.... “... We cannot avoid the conclusion ... that the search in substance and effect was a joint operation of the local and federal officers.... “... The Fourth Amendment was adopted in view of long misuse of power in the matter of searches and seizures ... and the assurance against any revival of it, so carefully embodied in the fundamental law, is not to be impaired by judicial sanction of equivocal methods, which, regarded superficially, may seem to escape the challenge of illegality but which, in reality, strike at the substance of the constitutional right.” Id. at 249-50 (emphasis in original).”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent““We do not question the right of the federal government to avail itself of evidence improperly seized by state officers operating entirely upon their own account. But the rule is otherwise when the federal government itself, through its agents acting as such, participates in the wrongful search and seizure. •if ^”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.