Commonwealth v. Saxon’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 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 3 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The constitutional requirement of definiteness is violated by a criminal statute that fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by the statute. The underlying principle is that no man shall be held criminally responsible for conduct which he could not reasonably understand to be proscribed. “On the other hand, if the general class of offenses to which the statute is directed is plainly within its terms, the statute will not be struck down as vague, even though marginal cases could be put where doubts might arise . . . And if this general class of offenses can be made constitutionally defi nite by a reasonable construction of the statute, this Court is under a duty to give the statute that construction.””

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