Commonwealth v. Sutley’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 113 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 123 later decisions — most recently January 2018 · most notably United States v. McGlory (1992), Commonwealth v. Mockaitis (2003)
6 federal appellate · 113 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 Buckley v. Valeo · Prentis v. Atlantic Coast Line Co. · Brown v. Walker · Fletcher v. Peck · United States v. Brown
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 123 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is elementary that the legislature may not, under the guise of an act affecting remedies, destroy or impair final judgments obtained before the passage of the act, and this principle prohibits not only a statutory re-opening of cases previously decided by the court but also legislation affecting the inherent attributes of judgment ....”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent“This Court has long recognized the applicability of the principles of `the inviolability of final judgments of the judiciary' in criminal cases as well as civil cases.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.