Colorado v. Bertine’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
737 federal appellate · 152 district · 1,246 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,748 later decisions (27 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2026 · most notably Whren v. United States (1996), Horton v. California (1990)
737 federal appellate · 152 district · 1,246 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 Coolidge v. New Hampshire · Delaware v. Prouse · United States v. Ross · New York v. Belton · United States v. Robinson
Cited together with South Dakota v. Opperman · Florida v. Wells · Illinois v. Lafayette · Terry v. Ohio · New York v. Belton
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 2,748 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“well-defined exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment.”
86 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“so long as that discretion is exercised according to standard criteria and on the basis of something other than suspicion of evidence of criminal activity.”
70 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'a purposeful and general means of discovering evidence of crime' "). If the simple collection of evidence justifies an exception to the warrant requirement even where a warrant could be easily obtained, exceptions would become the rule. Ibid. Finally, as a general matter, the States have ample tools to force compliance with lawfully obtained warrants. This Court has never cast doubt on the States' ability to impose criminal penalties for obstructing a search authorized by a lawfully obtained warrant. No resort to violent compliance would be necessary to compel a test. If a police officer obtains a warrant to conduct a breath test, citizens can be subjected to serious penalties for obstruction of justice if they decline to cooperate with the test. This Court has already taken the weighty step of characterizing breath tests as "searches”
27 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.