Cardwell v. Lewis’s Empirical Analysis
1974
Citation profile
708 federal appellate · 96 district · 835 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,918 later decisions (57 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2025 · most notably Rakas v. Illinois (1979), Stone v. Powell (1976)
708 federal appellate · 96 district · 835 state decisions — followed in 44 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
reviewedArthur Ben Lewis, Jr. v. Harold J. Cardwell, Warden (from Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Katz v. United States · Schneckloth v. Bustamonte · Carroll v. United States · Brinegar v. United States · Coolidge v. New Hampshire
Cited together with Chambers v. Maroney · Carroll v. United States · Katz v. United States · Coolidge v. New Hampshire · South Dakota v. Opperman
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 1,918 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“One has a lesser expectation of privacy in a motor vehicle because its function is transportation and it seldom serves as one’s residence or as the repository of personal effects. A car has little capacity for escaping public scrutiny. It travels public thoroughfares where both its occupants and its contents are in plain view.”
75 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“Respondent contends that here, unlike Chambers, probable cause to search the car existed for some time prior to arrest and that, therefore, there were no exigent circumstances. Assuming that probable cause previously existed, we know of no case or principle that suggests that the right to search on probable cause and the reasonableness of seizing a car under exigent circumstances are foreclosed if a warrant was not obtained at the first practical moment. Exigent circumstances with regard to vehicles are not limited to situations where probable cause is unforeseeable and arises only at the time of the arrest. The exigency may arise at any time, and the fact that the police might have obtained a warrant earlier does not negate the possibility of a current situation’s necessitating prompt police action.”
35 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“automobile was seized from a public place where access was not meaningfully restricted”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.