Smith v. Ohio’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
75 federal appellate · 19 district · 223 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 384 later decisions (7 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Horton v. California (1990), State v. Andrews (1991)
75 federal appellate · 19 district · 223 state decisions — followed in 20 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 · Katz v. United States · Chimel v. California · Johnson v. United States · Sibron v. State of New York Peters
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 384 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“an incident search may not precede an arrest and serve as part of its justification.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[J]ustifying the arrest by the search and at the same time the search by the arrest, just will not do.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“That reasoning, however, "justify[ing] the arrest by the search and at the same time ... the search by the arrest," just "will not do." As we have had occasion in the past to observe, "[i]t is axiomatic that an incident search may not precede an arrest and serve as part of its justification." The exception for searches incident to arrest permits the police to search a lawfully arrested person and areas within his immediate control. Contrary to the Ohio Supreme Court's reasoning, it does not permit the police to search any citizen without a warrant or probable cause so long as an arrest immediately follows.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.