Massachusetts v. Sheppard’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
484 federal appellate · 111 district · 619 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,550 later decisions (30 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2026 · most notably United States v. Leon (1984), New Jersey v. T. L. O. (1985)
484 federal appellate · 111 district · 619 state decisions — followed in 39 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 Illinois v. Gates · United States v. Leon · Camara v. Municipal Court of City and County of San Francisco · See v. City of Seattle · Steagald v. United States
Cited together with United States v. Leon · Illinois v. Gates · Franks v. Delaware · Brown v. Illinois · Mapp v. Ohio
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 1,550 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he exclusionary rule was adopted to deter unlawful searches by police, not to punish the errors of magistrates and judges.”
38 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[a]n error of constitutional dimensions may have been committed with respect to the issuance of the warrant,”
32 later decisions quote this exact passage“obtained by officers acting in reasonable reliance on a search warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate but ultimately found to be unsupported by probable cause.”
11 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.