Menefee v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1949
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 37 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 42 later decisions — most recently February 2016 · most notably Burns v. Commonwealth (2001), Burns v. Com. (2001)
3 federal appellate · 37 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 Mercer v. State · Whitehead v. Kirk · In Re Estate of Pusey · State v. Dixson · Posner v. New York Life Insurance
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 42 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is difficult to formulate any rule by which various matters transpiring between spouses may be readily catalogued and correctly classified as “communications privately made.” Yet, in our opinion, the immunity and ban of the statute applies to and includes all information or knowledge privately imparted and made known by one spouse to the other by virtue of and in consequence of the marital relation through conduct, acts, signs, and spoken or written words.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Husband and wife shall be competent witnesses to testify for or against each other in all civil actions; provided that neither husband nor wife shall, without the consent of the other, be examined in any action as to any communication privately made by one to the other while married, nor shall either be permitted, without such consent, to reveal in testimony after the marriage relation ceases any such communication made while the marriage subsisted.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““In civil and criminal cases, all objections to writs of every kind, pleadings, instructions, notices, the admissibility of evidence, or other matters requiring a ruling or judgment of the trial court, shall state with reasonable certainty the ground of objection, and, unless it appears from the record to have been so stated, such objections will not be considered by this court except for good cause shown, or to enable this court to attain the ends of justice.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Reil v. Commonwealth
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.