346 Pa. Super. 60 - Commonwealth v. Stock’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 23 later decisions — most recently June 2021
23 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 Broadrick v. Oklahoma · Ohio Bureau of Employment Services v. Hodory · Miller v. California · Dombrowski v. Pfister · Stanley v. Georgia
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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"Stock next argues that the obscenity statute unlawfully delegates legislative power to the several district attorneys of the Commonwealth by conferring on them the discretion whether to proceed against alleged violators by criminal prosecution or equitable injunction. See [18 Pa Cons Stat § 5903(g), (h)]. Stock contends that this prosecutorial option offends Article 2, § 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution as well as the Fourteenth Amendment by confiding a standardless legislative discretion in district attorneys. We disagree. The statute defining the offense creates a clear, explicit standard in accordance with the definition of obscenity announced by the United States Supreme Court in Miller. The statute gives the district attorney no say in deciding what is or is not obscene; the only discretion provided is in the means of enforcement chosen to combat the evils identified in the legislation. This alleged `delegation' of discretion is in reality not a delegation at all, but merely a particular manifestation of the inherent discretionary powers of district attorneys in our system of justice. A district attorney by the nature of his office is invested with broad discretion over how, whether, and when to prosecute criminal offenses. See Commonwealth v. Malloy, [ 304 Pa.Super. 297 , 450 A.2d 689 (1982)] (Opinion by Cirillo, J.). This discretion is not lessened when the prosecutor is charged with deciding which of two legislatively authorized techniques of enforcement will more ”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“(a) No person, knowing the obscene character of the materials or performances involved, shall: (2) sell, lend, distribute, exhibit, give away or show any obscene materials to any person 17 years of age or older or offer to sell, lend, distribute, exhibit or give away or show, or have in his possession with intent to sell, lend, distribute, exhibit or give away or show any obscene materials to any person 17 years of age or older, or knowingly advertise any obscene materials in any manner. ...”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“we bear in mind that the judiciary must accord a strong presumption of constitutionality to the acts of the legislature as a coequal branch of government. To overcome this presumption, the person challenging the constitutionality of a statute shoulders the heavy burden of demonstrating that the statute clearly, palpably, and plainly violates the constitution.”
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.