Horton v. California’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
1,178 federal appellate · 299 district · 2,323 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5,011 later decisions (18 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2026 · most notably Wilson v. Layne (1999), Minnesota v. Dickerson (1993)
1,178 federal appellate · 299 district · 2,323 state decisions — followed in 48 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 Katz v. United States · Chimel v. California · Payton v. New York · Coolidge v. New Hampshire · Johnson v. United States
Cited together with Texas v. Brown · Terry v. Ohio · Coolidge v. New Hampshire · Katz v. United States · Arizona v. Hicks
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 5,011 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The fact that an officer is interested in an item of evidence and fully expects to find it in the course of a search should not invalidate its seizure if the search is confined in area and duration by the terms of a warrant or a valid exception to the warrant requirement.”
192 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“have a lawful right of access to the object itself.”
36 later decisions quote this exact passage“incriminating character must ... be 'immediately apparent.'”
22 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.