Commonwealth v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1954
Citation profile
8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently April 2003
8 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 Mars v. Meadville Telephone Co. · 131 Pa. Super. 28 - Commonwealth v. Long · Commonwealth v. Joyce · 165 Pa. Super. 53 - Commonwealth v. Carnes · 128 Pa. Super. 264 - Commonwealth v. Buoy
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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The statute does not require that a person be drunk, or intoxicated, or unable to drive his automobile safely in traffic, but merely that the Commonwealth prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was operating his automobile under the influence of intoxicating liquor ... The statutory expression “under the influence of intoxicating liquor” includes not only all the well known and easily recognized conditions and degrees of intoxication, but also any mental or physical condition which is the result of drinking alcoholic beverages and (a) which makes one unfit to drive an automobile or (b) which substantially impairs his judgment, or clearness of intellect, or any of the normal faculties essential to the safe operation of an automobile.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.