Schmerber v. State of California’s Empirical Analysis
1966
Citation profile
1,848 federal appellate · 359 district · 6,841 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10,464 later decisions (179 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2025 · most notably Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics (1971), United States v. Wade (1967)
1,848 federal appellate · 359 district · 6,841 state decisions — followed in 50 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.
Relationships
Relies on Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Mapp v. Ohio · Aguilar v. Texas · Escobedo v. Illinois
Cited together with Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · United States v. Wade · Gilbert v. California · Katz v. United States · United States v. Dionisio
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 10,464 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The interests in human dignity and privacy which the Fourth Amendment protects forbid any such intrusions on the mere chance that desired evidence might be obtained. In the absence of a clear indication that in fact such evidence will be found, these fundamental human interests require law officers to suffer the risk that such evidence may disappear unless there is an immediate search.”
576 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“has become routine in our everyday life.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“"Such incriminating evidence may be an unavoidable by-product of the compulsion to take the test, especially for an individual who fears the extraction or opposes it on religious grounds. If it wishes to compel persons to submit to such attempts to discover evidence, the State may have to forego the advantage of any testimonial products of administering the testproducts which would fall within the privilege. Indeed, there may be circumstances in which the pain, danger, or severity of an operation would almost inevitably cause a person to prefer confession to undergoing the `search,' and nothing we say today should be taken as establishing the permissibility of compulsion in that case." 384 U.S. at 765, 86 S.Ct. at 1833, 16 L.Ed.2d at 916.”
8 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.