United States v. David’s Empirical Analysis
940 F.2d 722 · 1991
Citation profile
184 federal appellate · 16 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 238 later decisions — most recently June 2025 · most notably United States v. Sepulveda (1993), United States v. Saccoccia (1995)
184 federal appellate · 16 district · 4 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 18 U.S.C. § 2518 (Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986) · 21 U.S.C. § 841 (§ 401 of the Controlled Substances Act) · 21 U.S.C. § 843 (§ 403 of the Controlled Substances Act) · 21 U.S.C. § 846 (§ 406 of the Controlled Substances Act) · 21 U.S.C. § 848 (§ 408 of the Controlled Substances Act)
Relies on Carnegie v. United States · Mistretta v. United States · Bibby v. United States · Scott v. United States · Daniel v. Security Pacific National Bank
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 238 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[a]doption by reference . . . cannot occur in a vacuum; to be meaningful, the arguments adopted must be readily transferrable from the proponent's case to the adopter's case.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[b]ecause drug trafficking is inherently difficult to detect and presents formidable problems in pinning down the participants and defining their roles, investigative personnel must be accorded some latitude in choosing their approaches.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“a reasonable, good faith effort to run the gamut of normal investigative procedures before resorting to means so intrusive as electronic interception of telephone calls.”
3 later decisions 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.