Commonwealth v. White’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 103 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 107 later decisions — most recently June 2015 · most notably Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer (1982), Commonwealth v. Frey (1984)
2 federal appellate · 103 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 Sansone v. United States · State v. Marshall Norman Hicks · Commonwealth v. Tervalon · People v. Mussenden · Commonwealth v. Polimeni
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 107 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“when the trial evidence reasonably would support such a verdict”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Unfortunately for the bar, both prosecution and defense, and the trial bench, the problem exemplified by [White ] (whether a jury instruction on involuntary manslaughter need be given in all homicide prosecutions) continue[d] to be subject to differing views, among members of [our Supreme] Court.... [Several cases [came] before [our Supreme] Court raising the present issue, although frequently with crucial factual distinctions, receiving only majority support as to result, not as to rationale.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.