Gray v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1916
Citation profile
11 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently June 1963
11 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Paul Petit v. State of Minnesota · Ex parte Newman · Commonwealth v. Dextra · Stratman v. Commonwealth · State v. Frederick
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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It has been said that the best thought and ablest writers of modern times agree, and human experience has demonstrated, that it is to the best interest of the human family that the members of it have days of rest, and that such days are essential to the moral and physical well-being of society. The Sunday statute was adopted as an assistance to the conservation of the lives and health of all the citizens of the country, to promote their morality and love of family and home. It enables the people who toil daily to be in the society of their wives and children, and to have the benefit of religious worship, upon one day out of seven.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Its requirement is a cessation from labor. In its enactment tbe legislature has given the sanction of law to a rule of conduct, which the entire civilized world recognizes as essential to the physical and moral well-being-of society. Upon no subject is there such a concurrence of opinion among philosophers, moralists and statesmen of all nations as on the necessity of periodical cessations-, from labor. One day in seven is the rule founded in experience and sustained by science. The prohibition of secular business on Sunday is advocated on the grounds,' that-by it the general welfare is advanced, labor protected and the moral and physical well-being of society promoted.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““The necessity must be a real and not a fancied one there must be not only an honest belief on the part of the defendant that the necessity exists, but the actual existence of the necessity must be shown, nor does the exception embrace work which is merely convenient but not* necessary.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.