United States v. Cox’s Empirical Analysis
449 F.2d 679 · 1971
Citation profile
81 federal appellate · 10 district · 27 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 135 later decisions — most recently June 2018 · most notably United States v. Papia (1977), United States v. Turner (1975)
81 federal appellate · 10 district · 27 state decisions — followed in 15 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
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 2 · 18 U.S.C. § 2113 · 18 U.S.C. § 2517 (Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986) · 18 U.S.C. § 2518 (Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986) · 47 U.S.C. § 605
Relies on Wong Sun v. United States · Katz v. United States · Bruton v. United States · Coolidge v. New Hampshire · Boyd 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 135 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It would be irrational to hold that officers authorized to listen to conversations about drug traffic, upon learning that a bank robbery is to occur, must at once close down the project . . .”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“In enacting § 2517(5) as part of the comprehensive wiretap provisions of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2515 , et seq., Congress sought to balance two conflicting principles. One is the necessity of protecting Fourth Amendment and privacy rights, which require scrupulous particularity as to the circumstances and reasons for an electronic search before permitting it to be authorized by the courts as a means of insuring that its scope will be limited and its invasion of privacy minimized. It was recognized that unless stringent detail were required the government might obtain an overly broad wiretap authorization for one offense as a pretext for gaining information with respect to offenses for which probable cause could not be established or for which wiretap authorization would be unavailable. The countervailing principle is that where a law enforcement officer lawfully engaged in a search for evidence of one crime inadvertently comes upon evidence of another crime the public interest militates against his being required to ignore what is in plain view. In permitting court authorization for electronic interceptions in investigations into certain types of crime, Congress provided that the court authorization must specify the offenses in connection with which the permission was granted and, should the law enforcement officer, in the course of conducting the authorized interception, come across communications relating to offenses other than t”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“The tremendous scientific and technological developments that have taken place in the last century have made possible today the widespread use and abuse of electronic surveillance techniques. As a result of these developments, privacy of communication is seriously jeopardized by these techniques of surveillance.... No longer is it possible, in short, for each man to retreat into his home and be left alone. Every spoken word relating to each man's personal, marital, religious, political, or commercial concerns can be intercepted by an unseen auditor and turned against the speaker to the auditor's advantage.”
1 later decision 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.