Smith v. Maryland’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
892 federal appellate · 351 district · 1,665 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,782 later decisions (57 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Hudson v. Palmer (1984), Texas v. Brown (1983)
892 federal appellate · 351 district · 1,665 state decisions — followed in 46 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 · Katz v. United States · Mapp v. Ohio · Rakas v. Illinois · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. State of Alabama Patterson
Cited together with Katz v. United States · Rakas v. Illinois · Terry v. Ohio · United States v. Miller · Oliver 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 3,782 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.”
91 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“he seeks to preserve [something] as private.”
86 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy,”
42 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.