Commonwealth v. Shields’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
39 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 39 later decisions — most recently March 2019 · most notably Commonwealth v. Williams (1996), Commonwealth v. Blais (1998)
39 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 Terry v. Ohio · Delaware v. Prouse · United States v. Brignoni-Ponce · Texas v. Brown · United States v. Sharpe
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 39 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“no less intrusive yet equally effective alternative”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“To carry its burden of proving that the roadblock seizure was reasonable the Commonwealth must show, at least, that the roadblock was conducted in accordance with the guidelines established in Trumble, supra, and Commonwealth v. McGeoghegan, 389 Mass. 137 , 449 N.E.2d 349 (1983). See Commonwealth v. Amaral, 398 Mass. 98, 101 , 495 N.E.2d 276 (1986). Adherence to these guide lines, the content of which need not be recited here, assures that a roadblock seizure is the result of a “plan embodying explicit, neutral limitations on the conduct of individual officers.” Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 51 , 99 S. Ct. 2637, 2640 , 61 L. Ed. 2d 357 (1979). Conducting roadblocks in accordance with such neutral criteria minimizes the risk “that the individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy [will be] ‘subject to the discretion of the official in the field. ’ ” Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 655 , 99 S. Ct. 1391, 1397 , 59 L. Ed. 2d 660 (1979), quoting Camara, supra 387 U.S. at 532, 87 S. Ct. at 1732. Adherence to the guidelines’ requirements also assures that the surprise, fear, and inconvenience to — and therefore the intrusion on — the motoring public is minimized.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[t]he strong State interest in eliminating the carnage caused by drunk drivers, ... sets roadblocks to enforce c. 90, § 24, apart from roadblocks for other purposes”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.