Commonwealth v. Lopez’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 district · 14 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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “We must consider, then, whether this question was an order. The defendant argues that an order may take the form of a question. A question, however, is typically not an order. A question is an inquiry; an order is a command. A question requests an answer, while an order demands obedience. To recognize that questions and orders are different creatures is not, of course, to ignore the fact that circumstances of an encounter with police may be sufficiently intimidating that a reasonable person would feel compelled to respond to a police officer's question as he believes the officer would wish him to.”

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

2. “was aggressive, that [any] officer physically blocked the defendant from leaving, or that the officers issued any orders or commands to the defendant.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 95 Mass. App. Ct. 641 - Commonwealth v. Jones