United States v. Pollack’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

27 federal appellate · 6 district · 2 state decisions

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 40 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[T]he record is silent as to the characteristics of the area in which the vehicle was encountered, the proximity of the area to the border, the usual patterns of traffic on the particular road and information about recent or expected illegal immigrant activity in the area. Additionally, the record does not provide details of the agent’s previous experience with alien traffic beyond Agent Goad’s suggestions that “sometimes” alien smugglers use pickups with camper shells and “sometimes” they travel Highway 85. As such, the record fails to provide the “whole picture” necessary to justify the stopping of this heavily loaded pickup truck on this road at this time of day.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Miranda-Enriquez · United States v. Barbee

2. ““Terms like ‘articulable reasons’ and ‘founded suspicion’ are not self-defining; they fall short of providing clear guidance dispositive of the myriad factual situations that arise. But the essence of all that has been written is that the totality of the circumstances — the whole picture — must be taken into account. Based upon that whole picture the detaining officers must have a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Miranda-Enriquez