Totality of the circumstances

In the law, the totality of the circumstances test refers to a method of analysis where decisions are based on all available information rather than bright-line rules.[1] Under the totality of the circumstances test, courts focus "on all the circumstances of a particular case, rather than any one factor".[2] In the United States, totality tests are used as a method of analysis in several different areas of the law.[3] For example, in United States criminal law, a determination about reasonable suspicion or probable cause is based on a consideration of the totality of the circumstances.[4]

  1. ^ Kit Kinports, Probable Cause and Reasonable Suspicion: Totality Tests or Rigid Rules? 163 U. Pa. L. Rev. 75, 75 (2014) (describing the totality of the circumstances test as a rejection of "rigid" rules).
  2. ^ Black's Law Dictionary, Totality of circumstances test (Accessed March 2, 2016).
  3. ^ Compare Timothy N. Trop, The Evolution of the Totality of the Circumstances Test for Willful Infringement, 27 IDEA 241, 250 (1987) (discussing the use of totality tests to determine whether a patent was willfully infringed upon) with David Allen Peterson, Criminal Procedure: Totality of the Circumstances Test for Determining Probable Cause Applied to Informer's Tips, 23 Washburn L.J. 437, 451 (1984) (discussing the use of totality tests "for determining probable cause based upon an informer's tip").
  4. ^ Kit Kinports, Probable Cause and Reasonable Suspicion: Totality Tests or Rigid Rules? 163 U. Pa. L. Rev. 75, 75 (2014) (citing Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213 (1983)) ("Since its decision more than thirty years ago in Illinois v. Gates, the Supreme Court has emphasized that the Fourth Amendment’s suspicion requirements — the probable cause required to arrest and search, the reasonable suspicion needed to stop and frisk — are totality-of-the-circumstances tests.").