Commonwealth v. Davis’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 8 district · 39 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 57 later decisions — most recently February 2021 · most notably Arnold v. City of Cleveland (1993), United States of America v. Timothy Joe Emerson (2001)
5 federal appellate · 8 district · 39 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.
Relationships
Relies on Tot v. United States · United States v. Cruikshank · United States v. Miller · Presser v. State of Illinois · BURTON v. Sills
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 57 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“directed to guaranteeing individual ownership or possession of weapons”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Presumptively the statute is valid as a police measure; indeed a sawed-off shotgun seems a most plausible subject of regulation as it may be readily concealed and is especially dangerous because of the wide and nearly indiscriminate scattering of its shot. A Legislature might be justified in concluding that such weapons are associated with violent crime and call for strict licensing if not suppression.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. LaChapelle“law forbidding the keeping by individuals of arms that were used in the militia service might then have interfered with the effectiveness of the militia and thus offended the art. 17 right . . . that situation no longer exists; our militia, of which the backbone is the National Guard, is now equipped and supported by public funds.”
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.