Commonwealth v. Lewis’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 34 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 42 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2024 · most notably Rogers v. Tennessee (2001), Arthurs v. Board of Registration in Medicine (1981)
6 federal appellate · 34 state decisions — followed in 15 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 Marks v. United States · Dobbert v. Florida · Bouie v. City of Columbia · United States v. Thirty-Seven (37) Photographs · Arthur J. Nathaniel v. W. J. Estelle, Jr., Director, Texas Department of Corrections
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 42 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“is accounted for by the perdurability of statutes in some of them stating the rule, by the fact that over the past years there have been few occasions on which the issue has been raised and presented squarely to the courts for decision, and by a tendency to regard so old a dogma as peculiarly suitable for interment by Legislatures not courts.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“We share the view that the rule is no longer supportable in reason, and that its relegation to the shades of history may be accomplished by court decision.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Vance“suggestion that the rule was intended to simply soften the old brutal law regarding homicides.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Vance
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.