Smyth v. Godwin’s Empirical Analysis
1949
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 28 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 38 later decisions — most recently December 2018 · most notably Virginia Department of Corrections v. Crowley (1984), Campbell v. Commonwealth (1993)
6 federal appellate · 28 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 Mooney v. Holohan · Tom Tong · Cross v. Burke · Sayers v. Bullar · Wilson v. State Highway Commissioner
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 38 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he provision prohibiting the allowance of an appeal to the Commonwealth in a case `involving the life or liberty of a person' was inserted in the Constitution to insure that in a criminal prosecution, where a man's guilt or innocence of the charge made against him is at issue, he may not `be put twice in jeopardy for the same offense.'”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Ordinarily, `a case involving the life or liberty of a person' connotes a criminal prosecution, a proceeding in which the conviction of an accused may result in a sentence of death or imprisonment, that is, a judgment directly depriving him of his life or liberty.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“must be interpreted in the light of its context. Smyth v. Godwin, 188 Va. 753, 760-61 , 51 S.E.2d 230, 233 , cert. denied, 337 U.S. 946 , 69 S.Ct. 1503 , 93 L.Ed. 1748 (1949).”
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.