Commonwealth v. Black’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
111 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 117 later decisions — most recently December 2017 · most notably Commonwealth v. Colson (1985), Commonwealth v. Tilley (1991)
111 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 Commonwealth v. Myrick · Commonwealth v. Cropper · Commonwealth v. Light · Commonwealth v. Walley · Murray v. Commonwealth
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 117 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) The slayer must have been free from fault in provoking or continuing the difficulty which resulted in the killing; (2) The slayer must have reasonably believed that he was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm, and that there was a necessity to kill in order to save himself therefrom; (3) The slayer must not have violated any duty to retreat or avoid the danger.”
4 later decisions 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.