United States v. Cordell’s Empirical Analysis
723 F.2d 1283 · 1983
Citation profile
45 federal appellate · 1 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 61 later decisions — most recently December 2021 · most notably United States v. Weaver (2002), United States v. Borys (1985)
45 federal appellate · 1 district · 6 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.
Relationships
Applies 21 U.S.C. § 841 (§ 401 of the Controlled Substances Act)
Relies on Terry v. Ohio · Wong Sun v. United States · Schneckloth v. Bustamonte · Florida v. Royer · United States v. Mendenhall
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 61 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Asking for and examining Royer’s ticket and his driver’s license were no doubt permissible in themselves, but when the officers identified themselves as narcotics agents, told Royer that he was suspected of transporting narcotics, and asked him to accompany them to the police room, while retaining his ticket and driver’s license and without indicating in any way that he was free to depart, Royer was effectively seized for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment. These circumstance surely amount to a show of official authority such that a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“When officers O'Connor and Abreu identified themselves as police officers, asked Cordell if he would speak to them, and requested his identification and airline ticket, they were doing nothing that could be construed as a Fourth Amendment seizure unless one views all encounters between the police and citizens as seizures requiring justification, and we do not. . However, when O'Connor handed Cordell's driver's license and airline tick et to Abreu, and told Cordell they were conducting a narcotics investigation, the encounter had become a detention.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Finger v. State
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.