Abel v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1960
Citation profile
1,087 federal appellate · 172 district · 1,109 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,997 later decisions (91 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Schneckloth v. Bustamonte (1973), Chimel v. California (1969)
1,087 federal appellate · 172 district · 1,109 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
reviewedUnited States v. Abel (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Johnson v. United States · Boyd v. United States · Weeks v. United States · United States v. Rabinowitz · McNabb v. United States
Cited together with United States v. Rabinowitz · Harris v. United States · Terry v. Ohio · Carroll v. United States · Katz 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 2,997 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““When an article subject to lawful seizure properly comes into an officer’s possession in the course of a lawful search it would be entirely without reason to say that he must return it because it was not one of the things it was his business to look for.””
18 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““ * * * it was entirely lawful, although undertaken without a warrant. This is so for the reason that at the time of the search petitioner had vacated the room. The hotel then had the exclusive right to its possession, and the hotel management freely gave its consent that the search be made. Nor was it unlawful to seize the entire contents of the wastepaper basket, even though some of its contents had no connection with crime. So far as the record shows, petitioner had abandoned these articles. He had thrown them away. So far as he was concerned, they were bona vacantia. There can be nothing unlawful in the Government’s appropriation of such abandoned property. * * * ””
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““What the motive was of the I.N.S. officials who determined to arrest petitioner, and whether the I.N.S. in doing so was not exercising its powers in the lawful discharge of its own responsibilities but was serving as a tool for the F.B.I. in building a criminal prosecution against petitioner * *”
9 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.