Bumper v. North Carolina’s Empirical Analysis
1968
Citation profile
1,317 federal appellate · 280 district · 3,130 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5,870 later decisions (66 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2025 · most notably Schneckloth v. Bustamonte (1973), Rakas v. Illinois (1979)
1,317 federal appellate · 280 district · 3,130 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
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2106
Relies on Chapman v. State of California · Mapp v. Ohio · Jones v. United States · Witherspoon v. Illinois · Johnson v. United States
Cited together with Schneckloth v. Bustamonte · Terry v. Ohio · Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Katz v. United States · Wong Sun 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 5,870 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“When a prosecutor seeks to rely upon consent to justify the lawfulness of a search, he has the burden of proving that the consent was, in fact, freely and voluntarily given.”
193 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Our decision in Witherspoon does not govern the present case, because here the jury recommended a sentence of life imprisonment.””
29 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““ ‘Orderly submission to law-enforcement officers who, in effect, represented to the defendant that they had the authority to enter and search the house, against his will if necessary, was not such consent as constituted an understanding, intentional and voluntary waiver by the defendant of his fundamental rights under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.’ ””
4 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.