State v. Kessler’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 2 district · 33 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 40 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2024 · most notably District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), Arnold v. City of Cleveland (1993)
1 federal appellate · 2 district · 33 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.
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 40 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Our task * * * in construing a constitutional provision is to respect the principles given the status of constitutional guarantees and limitations by the drafters; it is not to abandon these principles when this fits the needs of the moment.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“The people shall have the right to bear arms for the defence (sic) of themselves, and the State, but the Military shall be kept in strict subordination to the civil power[.]”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“"Firearms and other hand-carried weapons remained the weapons of personal defense, but the arrival of steam power, mechanization, and chemical discoveries completely changed the weapons of military warfare. The development of powerful explosives in the mid-nineteenth century, combined with the development of mass-produced metal parts, made possible the automatic weapons, explosive, and chemicals of modern warfare. P. Cleator, Weapons of War 153-177 (1967). "These advanced weapons of modern warfare have never been intended for personal possession and protection. When the constitutional drafters referred to an individual's `right to bear arms,' the arms used by the militia and for personal protection were basically the same weapons. Modern weapons used exclusively by the military are not `arms' which are commonly possessed by individual for defense[;] therefore, the terms `arms' in the constitution does not include such weapons."”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.