Blackburn v. Snow’s Empirical Analysis
771 F.2d 556 · 1985
Citation profile
88 federal appellate · 40 district · 29 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 197 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2025 · most notably McMillian v. Monroe County (1997), Brennan v. Hendrigan (1989)
88 federal appellate · 40 district · 29 state decisions — followed in 13 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 · Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York · Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Katz v. United States · Schneckloth v. Bustamonte
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 197 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A “strip search,” though an umbrella term, generally refers to an inspection of a naked individual, without any scrutiny of the subject’s body cavities. A “visual body cavity search” extends to visual inspection of the anal and genital areas. A “manual body cavity search” includes some degree of touching or probing of body cavities.”
22 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“... we think it is clear that society is “prepared to recognize” that free citizens entering a prison, as visitors, retain a legitimate expectation of privacy [protected by the Fourth Amendment], albeit one diminished by the exigencies of prison security. To be sure, those visiting a prison cannot credibly claim to carry with them the full panoply of rights they normally enjoy. But neither may they constitutionally be made to suffer a wholesale loss of rights —nor even one commesurate with that suffered by inmates. (Énfasis suplido.)”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[A] rule requiring all prison visitors to submit to a body cavity strip search, without any predicate requirement of indi- vidualized suspicion or showing of special and highly unusual institu- tional need, cannot satisfy the Fourth Amendment.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.