People v. Allman’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 state decisions

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 3 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “At common law, the marital privilege was subject to the well-recognized exception that injuries to one spouse by the other were outside the rule. The reasoning underlying the exception is that the enforcement of the privilege would grant a license to injure a spouse in private and the wrong thus committed would go unpunished. Moreover, an injury inflicted on one spouse by the other is destructive of the very marriage which the privilege was intended to preserve. It is not too great an expansion of the exception, and one that is justified by the reasoning basic to it, to hold that the privilege should not apply to deliberate injuries inflicted on a child of the marriage by one spouse in the presence of the other. Otherwise, the lips of the witnessing spouse would be sealed to the detriment of the child; and the injustice of the act may never be uncovered. We think . . . that the wrong to the child is equally a wrong to the observing spouse and that the performance of the injury is equally as destructive of the marriage.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Adams v. State