Gustafson v. Florida’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
256 federal appellate · 17 district · 872 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,307 later decisions (26 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Whren v. United States (1996), New York v. Belton (1981)
256 federal appellate · 17 district · 872 state decisions — followed in 45 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 Terry v. Ohio · Chimel v. California · Adams v. Williams · Sibron v. State of New York Peters · Weeks v. United States
Cited together with United States v. Robinson · Terry v. Ohio · Chimel v. California · Carroll v. United States · United States v. Edwards
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 1,307 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A custodial arrest of a suspect based on probable cause is a reasonable intrusion under the Fourth Amendment; that intrusion being lawful, a search incident to the arrest requires no additional justification. It is the fact of the lawful arrest which establishes the authority to search, and we hold that in the case of a lawful custodial arrest a full search of the person is not only an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment, but is also a “reasonable” search under that Amendment.”
26 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[i]t is sufficient that the officer had probable cause to arrest and that he lawfully effectuated the arrest and placed the petitioner in custody.”
17 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"* * * Since it is the fact of custodial arrest which gives rise to the authority to search, it is of no moment that [the officer] did not indicate any subjective fear of the petitioner or that he did not himself suspect that the petitioner was armed. Having in the course of his lawful search come upon the box of cigarettes, [the officer] was entitled to inspect it; and when his inspection revealed the homemade cigarettes which he believed to contain an unlawful substance, he was entitled to seize them as `fruits, instrumentalities, or contraband' probative of criminal conduct. * * *" 414 U.S. 260, 265 , 94 S.Ct. 488, 492 , 38 L.Ed.2d 456, 461 .”
10 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.