New Jersey v. T. L. O.’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
963 federal appellate · 392 district · 1,576 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4,223 later decisions (97 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn. (1989), Maryland v. Buie (1990)
963 federal appellate · 392 district · 1,576 state decisions — followed in 48 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 · Illinois v. Gates · Wong Sun v. United States · Katz v. United States · United States v. Leon
Cited together with Terry v. Ohio · Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn. · Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton · O'CONNOR v. Ortega · Griffin v. Wisconsin
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 4,223 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the legality of a search of a student should depend simply on the reasonableness, under all the circumstances, of the search.”
392 later decisions quote this exact passage“Under ordinary circumstances, a search of a student by a teacher or other school official will be ‘justified at its inception’ when there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school. Such a search will be permissible in its scope when the measures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.”
32 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
32 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.