Bell v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
47 F.2d 438 · 1931
Citation profile
18 federal appellate · 23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 41 later decisions — most recently July 1986 · most notably Belton v. United States (1967), Morton v. United States (1945)
18 federal appellate · 23 state decisions — followed in 11 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 Sparf v. United States · Davis v. United States · Andersen v. United States · Wallace v. United States · Eskridge v. State
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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““[I]t was testified by the police officers that when he made the confession to them he was ‘partially under the influence of intoxicating liquor,’ that is, ‘you could detect the odor of liquor on his breath’ and ‘his speech was sort of thick,’ but that while ‘he showed indications of having been drinking * * * he had his mental faculties and knew what he was about’; and that he ‘was not drunk, but showed plainly he had been drinking.’ One of the police officers was asked, ‘In your opinion, if he had been operating an automobile would he have been under the influence of liquor to such an extent that you would have arrested him?’ to which he answered, ‘If my attention was brought directly to the man it may be possible he would be arrested for operating an automobile while drunk.’ ””
1 later decision 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.