United States v. Bell’s Empirical Analysis
464 F.2d 667 · 1972
Citation profile
88 federal appellate · 3 district · 26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 148 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2019 · most notably Gannett Co Inc v. A (1979), United States v. Oates (1977)
88 federal appellate · 3 district · 26 state decisions — followed in 16 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 Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Terry v. Ohio · Carroll v. United States · Brinegar v. United States · Chimel v. California
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 148 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“When the risk is the jeopardy to hundreds of human lives and millions of dollars of property inherent in the pirating or blowing up of a large airplane, the danger alone meets the test of reasonableness, so long as the search is conducted in good faith for the purpose of preventing hijacking or like damage and with reasonable scope and the passenger has been given advance notice of his liability to such a search so that he can avoid it by choosing not to travel by air.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““ * * * We need no citation of authority or statistics to establish that domestic and international hijacking of airplanes poses a continuing hazard to public travel. Human life and property have been jeopardized by the mentally ill, the political terrorist and the criminal extortioner who have in recent years discovered that an airplane in flight, [and at the terminal] despite all of its engineering sophistication, is a uniquely fragile and vulnerable target when a passenger or crew member is threatened by a weapon or an explosive.” United States v. Bell, 464 F.2d 667, 669 (2d Cir. 1972).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he weapon of the skyjacker is not limited to the conventional weaponry of the bank robber or the burglar. His arsenal may well include explosives. . . . [The object found] could have been gunpowder or some other explosive or deleterious substance which a hijacker might well use to cow the crew and passengers. . The fact that the object was not metal should not have concluded the inquiry.”
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.