Smith v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “is not preceded by a comma—a grammatical fact that renders it restrictive in nature modifying only the noun ( i.e., the criminal activity) immediately preceding it— vastly enlarging the scope of forbidden criminal activity to encompass far more than the marijuana use or gambling enterprises discussed above.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Heleringer v. Brown

2. “Each of the three prohibited behaviors is set off by commas; the conjunction or precedes the last offense. Thus, the activities are disjunctive and separate from one another. Furthermore, the participial phrase at the very end of the definition,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Heleringer v. Brown