Commonwealth v. DeFrancesco’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
38 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 38 later decisions — most recently October 2009 · most notably Commonwealth v. Mikulan (1983), Commonwealth v. Mastrangelo (1980)
38 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 Younger v. Harris · Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois · Broadrick v. Oklahoma · Grayned v. City of Rockford · McGowan v. State of Maryland Gallagher
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 38 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[w]here three or more persons are participating in a course of disorderly conduct which causes or may reasonably be expected to cause substantial harm or serious inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, a peace officer or other public servant engaged in executing or enforcing the law may order the participants and others in the immediate- vicinity to disperse. A person who refuses or knowingly fails to obey such an order commits a misdemeanor of the second degree.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“(a) Offense defined.—A person is guilty of theft if he intentionally obtains or withholds property of another by deception. A person deceives if he intentionally: (1) creates or reinforces a false impression, including false impressions as to law, value, intention or other state of mind; but deception as to a person’s intention to perform a promise shall not be inferred from the fact alone that he did not subsequently perform the promise; (2) prevents another from acquiring information which would affect his judgment of a transaction; or (3) fails to correct a false impression which the deceiver previously created or reinforced, or which the deceiver knows to be influencing another to whom he stands in a fiduciary or confidential relationship. (b) Exception.—The term “deceive” does not, however, include falsity as to matters having no pecuniary significance, or puffing by statements unlikely to deceive ordinary persons in the group addressed.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent“The United States Supreme Court, in Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156, 162 , 92 S.Ct. 839, 843 , 31 L.Ed.2d 110 (1972), articulated the standard to be used in determining whether a statute is void for vagueness: “. . . [when] it ‘fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by the statute,’ United States v. Harriss, 347 U.S. 612, 617 , 74 S.Ct. 808 , 98 L.Ed. 989 , and because it encourages arbitrary and erratic arrests and convictions. Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88 , 60 S.Ct. 736 , 84 L.Ed. 1093 ; Herndon v. Lowry, 301 U.S. 242 , 57 S.Ct. 732 , 81 L.Ed. 1066 .””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.