Welsh v. Wisconsin’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
749 federal appellate · 167 district · 1,595 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,172 later decisions (53 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2025 · most notably Anderson v. Creighton (1987), Whren v. United States (1996)
749 federal appellate · 167 district · 1,595 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 Payton v. New York · Coolidge v. New Hampshire · Schmerber v. State of California · Beck v. State of Ohio · Johnson v. United States
Cited together with Payton v. New York · United States v. Santana · Mincey v. Arizona · United States v. United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan · Warden, Maryland Penitentiary v. Hayden
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 3,172 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Before agents of the government may invade the sanctity of the home, the burden is on the government to demonstrate exigent circumstances that overcome the presumption of unreasonableness that attaches to all warrantless home entries.”
75 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“It is axiomatic that the 'physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.'”
52 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“that it is difficult to conceive of a warrantless home arrest that would not be unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment when the underlying offense is extremely minor.”
33 later decisions 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.