State v. Barnard’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

109 state decisions

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 109 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “A traffic stop is a seizure even though the purpose of the stop is limited and the resulting detention quite brief.”

   29 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. 247 N.C. App. 771 - State v. Crandell · 259 N.C. App. 650 - State v. Cox

2. “Lest the American people, and the people of North Carolina in particular, forget the foundational importance of the Fourth Amendment right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, we should recall that the cherished liberties enjoyed in our brief historical moment have been inherited by this generation only because they have been nurtured and protected by earlier generations of Americans so driven in their pursuit of liberty that life itself was not too great a cost to purchase liberty for themselves and their posterity.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. 197 N.C. App. 279 - Jones v. Graham County Board of Education

3. “[b]ecause [the] defendant's thirty-second delay at a green traffic light under these circumstances gave rise to a reasonable, articulable suspicion that [the] defendant may have been driving while impaired, the stop of [the] defendant's vehicle was constitutional[.]”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. 247 N.C. App. 771 - State v. Crandell