175 W. Va. 452 - State v. Thorne’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 23 later decisions — most recently August 2019
3 federal appellate · 20 state decisions — followed in 10 states
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
Applies 47 U.S.C. § 223
Relies on Grayned v. City of Rockford · Cantwell v. State of Connecticut · Chaplinsky v. State of New Hampshire · Screws v. United States · Grayned v. City of Rockford
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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he government has a strong and legitimate interest in preventing the harassment of individuals.... `Prohibiting harassment is not prohibiting speech, because harassment is not a protected speech. Harassment is not communication, although it may take the form of speech.'”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“It shall be unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to telephone another and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict injury or physical harm to the person or property of any person.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Brown“[n]o decision rendered by the court shall be considered as binding authority upon any court, except in the particular case decided, unless a majority of the justices of the court concur in such decision.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Thorne v. Bailey
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.