Watkins v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1965
Citation profile
45 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 45 later decisions — most recently July 2011 · most notably 1 Tenn. Crim. App. 1 - Webster v. State (1967), Hollins v. State (1978)
45 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 Commonwealth v. Tucker · Cooper v. State · Toles v. United States · Higgins v. L.A. Gas & Electric Co. · Wynn v. State
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 45 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is urged that the notes might be taken incorrectly and thus improperly influence the jurors in their deliberations. Certainly there would be as great danger of error upon the ‘tablets of their memory’ as upon the tablets in their hands. In the days when fewer men could read or write it might have been possible for one who could do so to use these abilities improperly. Today it is hardly likely that such a state of affairs would exist. While the stability of rule and precedent is desirable, it is not so important as to require inflexibility in the presence of changed conditions, indicating the necessity, or at least reason, for adaptation to modern conveniences and practices adopted by men in the conduct of the ordinary affairs of life.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Hollins v. State
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.