Commonwealth v. White’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 1 district · 37 state decisions

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 43 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is not the secret Intent of the assaulting party, nor the undisclosed fact of his ability or inability to commit a battery, that is material; but what his conduct and the attending circumstances denote at the time to the parly assaulted. If to him they indicate an attack, he is justified in resorting to defensive action. The same rule applies to the proof necessary to sustain a criminal complaint for an assault. It is the outward demonstration that constitutes the mischief which is punished as a breach of the peace.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Price v. United States

2. ““That if the defendant, within shooting distance, menacingly pointed at Harrington a gun, which Harrington had reasonable cause to believe was loaded, and Harrington was actually put in fear of immediate bodily injury therefrom, and the circumstances of the case were such as ordinarily to induce such fear in the mind of a reasonable man, that then an assault was committed, whether the gun was in fact loaded or not.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Price v. United States