327 Pa. Super. 253 - Commonwealth v. Beauford’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
74 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 76 later decisions — most recently April 2017 · most notably Commonwealth v. Edmunds (1991), Commonwealth v. Melilli (1989)
74 state decisions — followed in 10 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.
Relationships
Relies on Katz v. United States · Smith v. Maryland · Cooper v. State of California · United States v. Miller · United States v. Johnson
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 76 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“... we are convinced that a person picking up a telephone in his home or office fully expects that the number he is about to dial will remain as private as the contents of the communication he is about to have. That number provides a strong, sometimes conclusive inference as to whom is being called, unquestionably a private matter. The caller certainly evidences no intention to shed his veil of privacy merely because he chooses to use the telephone to make private contacts. In modern-day America the telephone call is a nearly indispensable tool used to conduct the widest range of business, government, political, social, and personal affairs...In any case we do not hesitate to say that a caller and the person he calls expect and are entitled to as much privacy in the fact they are talking to one another as in what they say to each other. Id. at 789 .”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage“If any law enforcement officer could, with or without probable cause or even reasonable suspicion, use a pen register on his own authority to record every number dialed by any citizen in Pennsylvania from a residential, business, or government phone, the pen register clearly could become a powerful weapon threatening invasion not only of the individual’s intimate privacy, but also his political liberty, including his rights to associate, to express his views, and even to think in freedom.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions from unreasonable searches and seizures, and no warrant to search any place or seize any person or things shall issue without describing them as nearly as may be, nor without probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation subscribed to by the affiant.”
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.