Commonwealth v. Ellsworth’s Empirical Analysis
1966
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 83 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 86 later decisions — most recently May 2009 · most notably Betrand Appeal (1973), Commonwealth v. Reece (1970)
3 federal appellate · 83 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 Wong Sun v. United States · Carroll v. United States · Mapp v. Ohio · Brinegar v. United States · Beck v. State of Ohio
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 86 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The mere fact that [appellant] had been preliminarily searched before ... did not eliminate the possibility that he might still have a potentiality of danger due to the possession of a concealed knife or other weapons which might very easily have been overlooked upon the officers' initial and hasty search .... [ Commonwealth v. Ellsworth, 421 Pa. 169 , 218 A.2d 249, 256 (1966).]”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“where `the facts and circumstances within their [the officers'] knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information [are] sufficient in themselves to warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief that `an offense has been or is being committed'.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Betrand Appeal
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.