Jackson v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1936
Citation profile
29 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 29 later decisions — most recently April 2009 · most notably Commonwealth v. Booth (2001), 77 Cal. App. 2d 621 - People v. Chavez (1947)
29 state decisions — followed in 12 states
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.
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 29 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““[I]n order to establish the corpus de-licti, in a case of infanticide, it must also be established that the child was born alive. In the absence of proof that the child had ever breathed or was alive at birth a conviction can not be sustained. It is necessary for the Commonwealth to prove affirmatively, not only that the child had breathed, because that might occur during birth, but that it had had a complete and separate existence of its own after birth. Being born means that the whole body is brought into the world, and it is not sufficient that the child breathes in the progress of the birth. But if a child is fully brought forth from the body of its mother, and is killed while still connected by the umbilical cord, it is murder. When the evidence that the child was born alive is susceptible of doubt, a conviction can not be sustained.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.