18 Va. App. 840 - Woolfolk v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1994
Citation profile
135 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 135 later decisions — most recently June 2019 · most notably 26 Va. App. 154 - Juares v. Commonwealth (1997), Long v. State (1996)
135 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 Broadrick v. Oklahoma · Grayned v. City of Rockford · Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc. · Kolender v. Lawson · Screws v. United States
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 135 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“`Generally, the words and phrases used in a statute should be given their ordinary and usually accepted meaning unless a different intention is fairly manifest.'”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“[t]he language of a penal statute should be given a reasonable or common sense construction, consonant with the objects of the legislation.... Indeed, when determining the boundaries of such a statute, the plain, obvious, and rational meaning of a statute is always preferred to any curious, narrow or strained construction.... [T]his general rule applies except when the language of the statute is ambiguous or would lead to an absurd result---- In such an instance, the meaning of doubtful words in a statute may be determined by reference to their association with related words and phrases.... Thus, when general words and specific words are grouped together, the general words are limited and qualified by the specific words and will be construed to embrace only objects similar in nature to those objects identified by the specific words.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“the statutory language must not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement. [This] ... “more important aspect of [the] vagueness doctrine” ... forbids the impermissible delegation of “ ‘basic policy matters to policemen, judges, and juries for resolution on an ad hoc and subjective basis, with the attendant dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory applications.’ ””
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.