United States v. Block’s Empirical Analysis
590 F.2d 535 · 1978
Citation profile
80 federal appellate · 8 district · 57 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 173 later decisions — most recently January 2019 · most notably State v. Wood (1980), United States v. Duncan (1979)
80 federal appellate · 8 district · 57 state decisions — followed in 28 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 Chapman v. State of California · Katz v. United States · United Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co. · Burks v. United States · Benton v. Maryland
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 173 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Common experience of life, clearly a factor in assessing the existence and the reasonableness of privacy expectations, surely teaches all of us that the law’s ‘enclosed spaces’—mankind’s valises, suitcases, footlockers, strong boxes, etc.—are frequently the objects of his highest privacy expectations, and that the expectations may well be at their most intense when such effects are deposited temporarily or kept semi-permanently in public places or in places under the general control of another.” United States v. Block, 590 F.2d 535, 541 (4th Cir. 1978).”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“but rests rather on mutual use of the property by persons generally having access or control for most purposes, so that it is reasonable to recognize that any of the coinhabitants has the right to permit the inspection in his own right and that the others have assumed the risk that one of their number might permit the common area to be searched.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'assess[es] the critical circumstances indicating the presence or absence of a discrete expectation of privacy with respect to the particular object: whether it is secured, 16 whether it is commonly used for preserving privacy, etc.'”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.