State v. Breton’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
2 district · 135 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 137 later decisions — most recently September 2021 · most notably In re Baby Girl B. (1992), State v. Reynolds (2003)
2 district · 135 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 Gregg v. Georgia · Furman v. Georgia · Kolender v. Lawson · Moran v. Burbine · Zant v. Stephens
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 137 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In choosing between two constructions of a statute, one valid and one constitutionally precarious, we will search for an effective and constitutional construction that reasonably accords with the legislature's underlying intent.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[t]he party attacking a validly enacted statute . . . bears the heavy burden of proving its unconstitutionality beyond a reasonable doubt and [the courts] indulge in every presumption in favor of the statute's constitutionality.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“Courts must avoid imposing criminal liability where the legislature has not expressly so intended.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.