State v. Dorso’s Empirical Analysis
1983
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 271 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 282 later decisions — most recently February 2026 · most notably State v. Awan (1986), 64 Ohio St. 3d 284 - Conley v. Shearer (1992)
3 federal appellate · 271 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 Connally v. General Construction Co. · Roth v. United States · Chaplinsky v. State of New Hampshire · Marks v. United States · United States v. Harriss
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 282 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“`Words in common use will be construed in their ordinary acceptation and significance and with the meaning commonly attributed to them.'”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage“{¶ 18} “Similarly uncontroverted is the legal principle that the courts must apply all presumptions and pertinent rules of construction so as to uphold, if at all possible, a statute or ordinance assailed as unconstitutional. State v. Sinito (1975), 43 Ohio St.2d 98, 101 [ 72 O.O.2d 54 , 330 N.E.2d 896 ]; Wilson v. Kennedy (1949), 151 Ohio St. 485, 492 [ 39 O.O. 301 , 86 N.E.2d 722 ]; Eastman v. State (1936), 131 Ohio St. 1 [ 5 O.O. 248 , 1 N.E.2d 140 ], paragraph four of the syllabus. Specifically, as to challenges to a statute based upon its alleged vagueness, the United States Supreme Court has stated, ‘* * * [I]f this general class of offenses [to which the statute applies] can be made constitutionally definite by a reasonable construction of the statute, this Court is under a duty to give the statute that construction.’ United States v. Harriss (1954), 347 U.S. 612, 618 [ 74 S.Ct. 808 , 98 L.Ed. 989 ]. Thus, we are obligated to indulge every reasonable interpretation favoring the ordinance in order to sustain it.” State v. Dorso (1983), 4 Ohio St.3d at 60 , 4 OBR 150, 446 N.E.2d 449 .”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage“'fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by the statute.'”
3 later decisions 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.