United States v. Scott’s Empirical Analysis
516 F.2d 751 · 1975
Citation profile
37 federal appellate · 7 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 63 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2014 · most notably Scott v. United States (1978), United States v. Heldt (1981)
37 federal appellate · 7 district · 3 state decisions
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.
Appellate journey
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 2517 (Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986) · 18 U.S.C. § 2518 (Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986) · 28 U.S.C. § 294
Relies on United States v. Di Re · United States v. Giordano · Byars v. United States · Peter J. Migliorini v. New York · Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, Inc.
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 63 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“* * * the only feasible approach to minimization is the gradual development, during the execution of a particular wiretap order, of categories of calls which most likely will not produce information relevant to the investigation. Once the monitoring agents have sufficient data to conclude that a particular type of conversation is unrelated to the criminal investigation, the minimization requirement obliges them to avoid intercepting future conversations as soon as they can determine that it falls within that category. Until such categories become reasonably apparent, however, interception of all calls will be justified under the wiretap authorization, [fn. omitted.] In addition, even after such a category is developed, it will likely still be necessary to intercept some portion of each call to determined whether it falls into the category being minimized, [fn. omitted.] Id. at 161, 516 F.2d at 754-55 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“. it is often impossible to determine that a particular telephone conversation would be irrelevant and harmless until it has been terminated. It is all well and good to say, after the fact, that certain conversations were irrelevant and should have been terminated. However, the monitoring agents are not gifted with prescience and cannot be expected to know in advance what direction the conversation will take.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“the decision on the suppression motion must ultimately be based on the reasonableness of the actual interceptions and not on whether the agents subjectively intended to minimize their interceptions.”
1 later decision 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.