Commonwealth v. Thompson’s Empirical Analysis
1957
Citation profile
11 federal appellate · 41 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 58 later decisions — most recently October 1991 · most notably 25 Cal. 3d 668 - People v. Flannel (1979), Commonwealth v. Simon (1968)
11 federal appellate · 41 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 Stein v. People of State of New York Wissner · Libby, McNeill & Libby v. Alaska Industrial Board · Yamashita Yamashita v. Styer US · Scripps-Howard Radio, Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission · Wales ex rel. Wales Trucking Co. v. United States
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 58 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A court-martial is a military or naval tribunal which has jurisdiction of offenses against the law of the service, military or naval, in which the offender is engaged ... While courts-martial are not a part of the judicial power of the U.S. and not included in the judicial part of the government ... the authority for their creation by the Congress arises under Article I, Sec. 8 of the Constitution ... The decisions of courts-martial are not reviewable by the civil courts except to determine whether a court-martial had jurisdiction or whether it exceeded its powers; the guilt or innocence of the defendants cannot be inquired into ... The judgment of a military court or court-martial, properly constituted, is res judicata, and its proceedings are not open to review in any other court ... Its judgments, when approved as required, rest on the same basis, and are surrounded by the same considerations which give conclusiveness to the judgments of other legal tribunals, including as well the lowest as the highest, under like circumstances.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“When I told you about the plea of self defense, even though you find it not sufficient to prove self defense, it may be used to negative or to throw such a doubt upon the element of malice so as to reduce the crime [to] manslaughter. When you apply that principle of the fear, apply the same one, that it need not be reasonable, if you find that the terror from the belief on the part of the defendant that his life was in immediate danger or he was in great bodily danger, that in itself is sufficient.”
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.