Florida v. Wells’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
357 federal appellate · 103 district · 726 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,517 later decisions (14 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Whren v. United States (1996), Florida v. Jimeno (1991)
357 federal appellate · 103 district · 726 state decisions — followed in 40 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 South Dakota v. Opperman · United States v. Chadwick · Arkansas v. Sanders · Colorado v. Bertine · Illinois v. Lafayette
Cited together with Colorado v. Bertine · South Dakota v. Opperman · Illinois v. Lafayette · Terry v. Ohio · Whren v. United States
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 1,517 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“an inventory search must not be a ruse for a general rummaging in order to discover incriminating evidence”
64 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“had no policy whatever with respect to the opening of closed containers encountered during an inventory search”
47 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“a ruse for a general rummaging in order to discover incriminating evidence.”
20 later decisions 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.