Commonwealth v. Blumenstein’s Empirical Analysis
1959
Citation profile
20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently November 1991
20 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 Roth v. United States · Chaplinsky v. State of New Hampshire · Winters v. People of State of New York · Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson · Swearingen 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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]hether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“interest was employed in the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Roth and Alberts case, supra, I doubt if more than one juryman in ten thousand knew its meaning. I shall assume that Section 524 of The Penal Code is, as the Commonwealth contends, valid and constitutional. It is a wise and universally accepted general rule that criminal cases should be tried and disposed of in Criminal Courts and not in Courts of Equity.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Cooper v. McDermott““The board shall examine or supervise the examinations of all films, reels, or views to be exhibited or used in Pennsylvania; and shall approve such films, reels, or views which are moral and proper; and shall disapprove such as are sacrilegious, obscene, indecent, or immoral, or such as tend, in the judgment of the board, to debase or corrupt morals.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.