State v. Cotton’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

30 state decisions

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 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Due process requires that criminal offenses be defined in terms clear enough to give persons of ordinary intelligence notice of what conduct is prohibited and contain explicit standards of application so as to prevent arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement. A criminal statute is vague only if it fails to give reasonable notice of what conduct is prohibited or is drafted in a way that permits arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. McDermott

2. “If a woman be quick with childe, and by a potion or otherwise killeth it in her womb, or if a man beat her, whereby the childe dyeth in her body, and she is delivered of a dead childe, this is a great misprision [misdemeanor], and not murder; but if the childe be born alive and dyeth of the potion, battery, or other cause, this is murder; for in law it is accounted a reasonable creature, in rerum natura, when it is born alive.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Booth

3. “give words their plain and ordinary meaning, unless the legislature has clearly expressed an intent to give a term special meaning.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Francis