United States v. Johnson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

85 federal appellate · 2 district · 14 state decisions

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 106 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[Inspections of motor vehicles performed by police officers, who were entitled to be on the property where the vehicles were located, which in no way damaged the vehicles and were limited to determining the correct identification numbers thereof [are] not searches within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment; ... alternatively, if ... such inspections constituted a Fourth Amendment search, then no search warrant was necessary because such inspections [are] reasonable and [do] not violate the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers or effects.”

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. United States v. Hopkins · United States v. Hull

2. ““An argument can be constructed that there is a difference where the police invasion is to seek identification numbers. I.e., because identification numbers, secret and otherwise, are for identification purposes the citizen can have no reasonable expectation of their remaining private — they are for identification, ergo, the citizen must expect them to be available to the police for the purpose for which intended. But the function of being an identification device does not exempt the device itself, or the instrumentality it identifies, from the Fourth Amendment. In our increasingly complex world our motor vehicles are not the only things numbered for identification. So are such tangible effects as household appliances, lawn mowers, outboard motors, and even the watches on our wrists. Add to the list such papers and documents kept in home, safe deposit box or on the person, as bank checks, drivers’ licenses, social security cards, credit cards, insurance policies, securities, and deeds and mortgages, and the automobile registration papers often carried in the glove compartment of the car. All of these items have primary or secondary qualities of identification, but this does not subject them, when not in plain view, to being sought out by police action beyond the reach of the Fourth Amendment.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 101 Ill. App. 3d 296 - People v. Piper

3. “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Edwards