349 Pa. Super. 289 - Commonwealth v. Sargent’s Empirical Analysis
1986
Citation profile
15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently September 2018
15 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 Erie Co v. Tompkins · Hanna v. Plumer · Bailey v. Butcher · Dick v. New York Life Insurance · Thompson v. Oklahoma
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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A statute establishing a burden of proof is difficult to classify as either a procedural rule or a rule affecting substantive rights and seems to contain elements of each. Cf. Commonwealth v. Sorrell, 500 Pa. 355, 364 , 456 A.2d 1326, 1331 (1982) (NIX, J., dissenting) (right to trial by jury neither purely procedural nor substantive but falls within gray area between substance and procedure). The thrust of appellant’s argument is that because § 9713(c) establishes the burden of proof to be utilized at sentencing, it dictates to the courts how to conduct a sentencing hearing and it is thus a matter of practice or procedure. (Brief for Appellant at 20-21). The burden of proof standard, however, may also be characterized as a substantive rule of law affecting substantive rights. For instance, for purposes of determining whether state or federal law applies in diversity cases, there is a long line of cases referring to the burden of proof as substantive. See, e.g., Dick v. New York Life Insurance Co., 359 U.S. 437, 446 , 79 S.Ct. 921, 927 , 3 L.Ed.2d 935 (1959); Coastal Plains Feeders, Inc. v. Hartford Fire Insurance Co., 545 F.2d 448 , 450-51 n. 5 (5th Cir.1977); Fireman’s Fund Insurance Co. v. Videfreeze Corp., 540 F.2d 1171, 1174-75 (3d Cir.1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1053 , 97 S.Ct. 767 , 50 L.Ed.2d 770 (1977); Boone v. Royal Indemnity Co., 460 F.2d 26, 29 (10th Cir. 1972). See generally, 1A Pt. 2 Moore’s Federal Practice ¶ 0.314[2] (2d ed. 1985) (burden of proof is substan”
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.