State v. Ferrell’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
28 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 32 later decisions — most recently December 2017 · most notably State v. Smith (1980), State v. Collins (1993)
28 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 Stevenson v. City of Durham · State v. Wynn · State v. Dooley · State v. Hart · State v. Rummage
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 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The primary function of a court in construing a statute is to ascertain the intent of the legislature .... In ascertaining this intent, a court looks to the language and spirit of the statute and what it sought to accomplish. ... It is also relevant to look to the history of the legislation and the circumstances surrounding its enactment.”
1 later decision 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.