Illinois v. Krull’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
450 federal appellate · 101 district · 736 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,641 later decisions (37 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2026 · most notably Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton (1995), Herring v. United States (2009)
450 federal appellate · 101 district · 736 state decisions — followed in 42 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 Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Illinois v. Gates · United States v. Leon · Mapp v. Ohio · Aguilar v. Texas
Cited together with United States v. Leon · Arizona v. Evans · United States v. Calandra · Herring v. United States · Illinois v. Gates
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 1,641 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Unless a statute is clearly unconstitutional, an officer cannot be expected to question the judgment of the legislature that passed the law. If the statute is subsequently declared unconstitutional, excluding evidence obtained pursuant to it prior to such a judicial declaration will not deter future Fourth Amendment violations by an officer who has simply fulfilled his responsibility to enforce the statute as written.”
30 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“As with any remedial device, application of the exclusionary rule properly has been restricted to those situations in which its remedial purpose is effectively advanced. Thus, in various circumstances, the Court has examined whether the rule's deterrent effect will be achieved, and has weighed the likelihood of such deterrence against the costs of withholding reliable information from the truth-seeking process.”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“evidence should be suppressed only if it can be said that the law enforcement officer had knowledge, or may properly be charged with knowledge, that the search was unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.”
12 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.