Alabama v. White’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
895 federal appellate · 185 district · 3,106 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5,023 later decisions (16 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Ornelas v. United States (1996), Idaho v. Wright (1990)
895 federal appellate · 185 district · 3,106 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 Terry v. Ohio · Illinois v. Gates · Carroll v. United States · Aguilar v. Texas · Spinelli v. United States
Cited together with Terry v. Ohio · Illinois v. Gates · Adams v. Williams · United States v. Cortez · United States v. Sokolow
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 5,023 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Reasonable suspicion is a less demanding standard than probable cause not only in the sense that reasonable suspicion can be established with information that is different in quantity or content than that required to establish probable cause, but also in the sense that reasonable suspicion can arise from information that is less reliable than that required to show probable cause.”
282 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the anonymous [tip] contained a range of details relating not just to easily obtained facts and conditions existing at the time of the tip, but to future actions of third parties ordinarily not easily predicted.”
126 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“an anonymous tip alone seldom demonstrates the informant's basis of knowledge or veracity.”
55 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.