Case Citator › Harris v. United States

Harris v. United States

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Overruled
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
331 U.S. 145
Decided
Confirmed treatments
2
Flagged citations read
106 of 106
Citing cases (total)
1,370
Treatment dates
1949–1969
Overruled
A reviewed court has overruled this case. Harris v. United States is overruled among the reviewed cases: all 106 flagged citations have been read, with two confirmed treatments listed below. Chimel v. California overruled Harris's approval of a warrantless search incident to arrest extending beyond the arrestee and the area within the arrestee's immediate reach.
More on how this was screened

Before Chimel, Johnson v. State declined to follow Harris's broad rationale under Maryland law. The other reviewed opinions applied Harris, used nearby adverse language for another authority or a procedural ruling, or merely reported Chimel's act as later case history.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

1,370 later cases cite Harris v. United States; 106 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Harris v. United States?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Overruled

  • The Court overruled Harris's approval of a warrantless search incident to arrest extending beyond the arrestee's person and the area within the arrestee's immediate reach for a weapon or destructible evidence.

    Chimel v. California · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    Rabinowitz and Harris have been the subject of critical commentary for many years, and have been relied upon less and less in our own decisions. It is time, for the reasons we have stated, to hold that on their own facts, and insofar as the principles they stand for are inconsistent with those that we have endorsed today, they are no longer to be followed.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

Declined to Follow

  • The court declined to follow Harris's broad search-incident-to-arrest rationale and held that the house-wide search exceeded the scope allowed under Maryland law.

    Johnson v. State · Court of Appeals of Maryland · filed

    Thus, the decisions in the Federal courts, especially in prosecutions for misdemeanors, are precedents in this State, but this court is not bound to follow all Federal cases as precedents. ... We cannot make the same distinction as the court did in the Harris case from the cases of Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United States ... and United States v. Lefkowitz ... This court has never construed the term “immediate possession” to confer a right as an incident to a lawful arrest to make the kind of search and seizure that was made in this case. ... We are of opinion that the search by the officers at the time they served the warrant was not justified as an incident to a lawful arrest, but was an unreasonable search and seizure, and unlawful, and a flagrant violation of the Bouse Act and the 26th and 22nd Articles of the Maryland Declaration of Rights.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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