Commonwealth v. Ladd’s Empirical Analysis
1960
Citation profile
57 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 57 later decisions — most recently February 2019 · most notably Valeriano v. Bronson (1988), Commonwealth v. Tarver (1981)
57 state decisions — followed in 17 states
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 Ball v. United States · Jackman v. Rosenbaum Co. · Commonwealth v. Redline · Commonwealth v. Drum · Commonwealth v. Bolish
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 57 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[a] rule becomes dry when its supporting reason evaporates”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“In cases of murder the rule at common law undoubtedly was that no person should be adjudged “by any act whatever to kill another who does not die by it within a year and a day thereafter....” And such is the rule in this country in prosecutions for murder, except in jurisdictions where it may be otherwise prescribed by statute.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The rule cannot, therefore, be said to be part of the definition of murder, either in Blackstone or in Pennsylvania. Nor do we see any reason in principle for reading Blackstone's addendum into the body of his definition.”
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.