Case Citator › United States v. Rabinowitz

United States v. Rabinowitz

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

Overruled
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
339 U.S. 56
Decided
Confirmed treatments
3
Flagged citations read
214 of 214
Citing cases (total)
2,079
Treatment dates
1965–1969
Overruled
A reviewed court has overruled this case. United States v. Rabinowitz is overruled: the Supreme Court abandoned its search-incident-to-arrest rule in Chimel v. California, and every one of the 214 flagged citations has now been read. The 3 confirmed treatments are listed below.
More on how this was screened

Chimel held that a search incident to a lawful arrest reaches only the arrestee's person and the area from which he might reach a weapon or evidence, displacing Rabinowitz's rule that such a search may extend to the whole of the premises under the arrestee's control. Before that decision the First Circuit in Niro v. United States confined Rabinowitz's reasonableness test, and the Southern District of New York in United States v. Bayley doubted the case would survive changes in the Court's composition. The remaining citing opinions are not treatments of this case: most applied or distinguished Rabinowitz while treating it as binding, many quoted its own partial overruling of Trupiano v. United States, and opinions after 1969 report Chimel's act in a history parenthetical rather than performing one. Nineteen flagged citations matched opinions whose full text never mentions Rabinowitz at all.

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.

2,079 later cases cite United States v. Rabinowitz; 214 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 United States v. Rabinowitz?

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 Supreme Court overruled Rabinowitz's rule that a search incident to a lawful arrest may extend to the whole of the premises under the arrestee's control, confining such a search to the arrestee's person and the area from which he might reach a weapon or 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 →

Limited

  • The First Circuit held that Rabinowitz had not wholly displaced Trupiano, and confined Rabinowitz's reasonableness test by ruling that an unexplained failure to obtain a warrant before a fully anticipated arrest is fatal to the search unless countervailing factors are shown.

    Niro v. United States · First Circuit · filed

    Two years later the Court decided United States v. Rabinowitz, 1950, 339 U.S. 56 ... While the Court said that the “practicability of procuring a search warrant” was no longer determinative, and that to that extent Trwpiano was overruled, it did not say that such omission was not a circumstance to be considered. ... We think it proper to say that while the failure to obtain a warrant when one could readily have been had is not of necessity fatal to a search or seizure concomitant with an arrest the nature of which had been fully anticipated, it will be fatal unless there are at least some countervailing factors.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

Questioned

  • The district court doubted that Rabinowitz remained good law, noting the closeness of the vote and the changes in the Supreme Court's composition since 1950.

    United States v. Bayley · S.D.N.Y. · filed

    It should perhaps first be noted that the Court was sharply divided in each case: 5 to 4 in Harris, 5 to 3 in Rabino-witz. Considering the changes in the Court’s composition since those decisions, it is problematical, if not doubtful, whether they are good law today.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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