Harper v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1955
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 47 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 57 later decisions — most recently September 2018 · most notably Yarborough v. Commonwealth (1977), Clark v. Com. (2010)
2 federal appellate · 47 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 Owens v. Commonwealth · Mitchell v. Commonwealth · Briggs v. Commonwealth · McReynolds v. Commonwealth · Litton v. Commonwealth
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 57 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"An assault is an attempt or offer, with force and violence, to do some bodily hurt to another, whether from wantonness or malice, by means calculated to produce the end if carried into execution; as by striking at him with a stick or other weapon, or without a weapon, though he be not struck, or even by raising up the arm or a cane in a menacing manner, by throwing a bottle of glass with an intent to strike, by levelling a gun at another within a distance from which, supposing it to be loaded, the contents might injure, or any similar act accompanied with circumstances denoting an intention coupled with a present ability, of using actual violence against the person of another. But no words whatever, be they ever so provoking, can amount to an assault; * * * ". (Italics supplied).”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"`What reasonably appeared to the accused at the time of the shooting, as creating the necessity for his act, is the test and not what reasonably appeared to him, provided it would so appear to some other reasonable person under similar circumstances. '"”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“In order to justify an accused in striking another with a deadly weapon ... a threatening attitude alone affords no justification.”
2 later decisions 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.