Winston v. Lee’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
315 federal appellate · 87 district · 550 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,176 later decisions (43 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2023 · most notably Whren v. United States (1996), United States v. Sokolow (1989)
315 federal appellate · 87 district · 550 state decisions — followed in 41 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Terry v. Ohio · Katz v. United States · Mapp v. Ohio · Payton v. New York · Rakas v. Illinois
Cited together with Schmerber v. State of California · Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn. · Rochin v. People of California · Bell v. Wolfish · Terry 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 1,176 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“most personal and deep-rooted expectations of privacy.”
81 later decisions quote this exact passage“The operation sought will intrude substantially on respondent’s protected interests. The medical risks of the operation, although apparently not extremely severe, are a subject of considerable dispute; the very uncertainty militates against finding the operation to be “reasonable.” In addition, the intrusion on respondent’s privacy interests entailed by the operation can only be characterized as severe. On the other hand, although the bullet may turn out to be useful to the Commonwealth in prosecuting respondent, the Commonwealth has failed to demonstrate a compelling need for it.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[T]he Fourth Amendment's command that searches be `reasonable' requires that when the State seeks to intrude upon an area in which our society recognizes a significantly heightened privacy interest, a more substantial justification is required to make the search `reasonable.'”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.