McLean v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1947
Citation profile
23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 25 later decisions — most recently March 2012 · most notably Bennett v. Angelone (1996), Norfolk Southern Railway Co. v. Harris (1950)
23 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 Combs v. State · Harrison v. Commonwealth · Mullins v. Commonwealth · Washington & Old Dominion Railway v. Ward's Administrator · Rinehart & Dennis Co. v. Brown
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 25 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“1. That a new trial may be allowed where the court has failed or refused to properly check improper remarks or argument of counsel, or to properly instruct the jury thereon, but the statements must be fairly calculated to improperly influence the jury. 2. That there are cases in which the effect of statements of counsel cannot be adequately overcome by direction to the jury to disregard the objectionable statements.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Sometimes it is difficult to draw the line between proper and improper comments, hence the general rule is to leave such distinction largely to the discretion of the trial court, whose ruling will be allowed to stand unless it is made to appear probable that the party complaining has been substantially prejudiced by the objectionable remarks or argument.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Avent v. Com.
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.