393 Pa. Super. 611 - Commonwealth v. Nelson’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
27 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 27 later decisions — most recently March 2018 · most notably Marks v. Tasman (1991), McMillen v. McMillen (1992)
27 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 Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Johnson v. Zerbst · Brady v. United States · Bram v. United States · Goldstein 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 27 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We inquire first whether the underlying claim is of arguable merit; that is, whether the disputed action or omission by counsel was of questionable legal soundness. If so, we ask whether counsel had any reasonable basis for the questionable action or omission which was designed to effectuate his client’s interest. If he did, our inquiry ends. If not, [an appellant may prevail on his ineffectiveness claim by demonstrating] that counsel’s improper course of conduct worked to his prejudice, i.e., had an adverse effect upon the outcome of the proceedings.”
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.