Case Citator › Hurtado v. California

Hurtado v. California

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

Limited by some courts
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
110 U.S. 516
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
52 of 52
Citing cases (total)
52
Treatment dates
1994
Limited by some courts
At least one reviewed court has limited this case’s holding to narrower facts or a narrower rule. No reviewed court has overruled it. Hurtado v. California remains authoritative for its holding that states may prosecute felonies by information without a grand jury indictment, but its broader due process language was limited. All 52 flagged citations have been read.
More on how this was screened

The Supreme Court's plurality in Albright v. Oliver declined to turn Hurtado's language about arbitrary government action into a general substantive due process test for prosecution without probable cause. That confirmed treatment is listed below.

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.

52 later cases cite Hurtado v. California; 52 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 Hurtado v. California?

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

Limited

  • The Supreme Court's Albright plurality declined to extend Hurtado's general language about arbitrary government action to a substantive due process claim for prosecution without probable cause.

    Albright v. Oliver · Supreme Court of the United States (plurality) · filed

    Petitioner points in particular to language from Hurtado v. California, 110 U. S. 516, 527 (1884), later quoted in Daniels, supra, stating that the words “by the law of the land” from the Magna Carta were “ ‘intended to secure the individual from the arbitrary exercise of the powers of government.’” This, too, may be freely conceded, but it does not follow that, in all of the various aspects of a criminal prosecution, the only inquiry mandated by the Constitution is whether, in the view of the Court, the governmental action in question was “arbitrary.”
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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