Adams v. Williams’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
2,296 federal appellate · 346 district · 5,308 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 9,335 later decisions (123 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2025 · most notably Illinois v. Gates (1983), Florida v. Royer (1983)
2,296 federal appellate · 346 district · 5,308 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedWilliams v. Adams (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Terry v. Ohio · Carroll v. United States · Aguilar v. Texas · Brinegar v. United States · Coolidge v. New Hampshire
Cited together with Terry v. Ohio · United States v. Brignoni-Ponce · United States v. Cortez · Sibron v. State of New York Peters · 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 9,335 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A brief stop of a suspicious individual, in order to determine his identity or to maintain the status quo momentarily while obtaining more information, may be most reasonable in light of the facts known to the officer at the time.”
362 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Informants’ tips, like all other clues and evidence coming to a policeman on the scene, may vary greatly in their value and reliability. One simple rule will not cover every situation. Some tips, completely lacking in indicia of reliability, would either warrant no police response or require further investigation before a forcible stop of a suspect would be authorized. But in some situations — for example, when the victim of a street crime seeks immediate police aid and gives a description of his assailant, or when a credible informant warns of a specific impending crime — the subtleties of the hearsay rule should not thwart an appropriate police response.”
134 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Probable cause does not require the same type of specific evidence of each element of the offense as would be needed to support a conviction.”
35 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.