State v. Moore’s Empirical Analysis
1863
Citation profile
24 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 25 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2005 · most notably United Zinc & Chemical Co. v. Britt (1922), 12 Cal. 3d 470 - People v. Ceballos (1974)
24 state decisions — followed in 14 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 25 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The class of crimes in prevention of which a man may, if necessary, exercise his natural right to repel force by force to the taking of the life of the aggressor, are felonies which are committed by violence and surprise; such as murder, robbery, burglary, arson, breaking a house in the day time with mtent to rob, sodomy, and rape. Blackstone says: ‘Such homicide as is committed for the prevention of any forcible and atrocious crime is justifiable by the law of nature; and also by the law of England as it stood as early as the time of Brackton;’ and he specifies, as of that character, those which we have enumerated. No others were specified by Hale or Hawkins, who Avrote before him on the Pleas of the Crown, or have been specified by any writer since. Mr. East, in his Pleas of the Crown, and Mr. Foster, from whom Judge SAvift quotes the laAv on this subject in his Digest (vol. 2, p. 283), states the rule thus: ‘A man may repel force by force in defense of his person, habitation, or property against one Avho manifestly intends or endeavors by violence and surprise to commit a known felony, such as murder, rape, robbery, arson, burglary, and the like, upon either. In these cases he is not obliged to retreat, but may pursue his adversary until he has secured himself from all danger, and if he kill him in so doing it will be justifiable self defense:’ I East P. C. 271; Foster’s Crown Law, 259. Neither of these writers specify any other crimes than those enumerated, and both exce”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Marfaudille
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.