Commonwealth v. Brown’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
58 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 60 later decisions — most recently September 2018 · most notably Commonwealth v. Cabeza (1983), Blackwell v. Com. State Ethics Com'n (1991)
58 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 Cort v. Ash · Hamling v. United States · Bradley v. School Board of City of Richmond · Thorpe v. Housing Authority of Durham · United States v. Schooner Peggy
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 60 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““But if, subsequent to the judgment and before the decision of the appellate court a law intervenes and positively changes the rule which governs, the law must be obeyed, or its obligation denied.... In such a case the court must decide according to existing laws, and if it be necessary to set aside a judgment, rightful when rendered, but which cannot be affirmed but in violation of law, the judgment must be set aside.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"[O]ur rule in civil cases which applies the law in effect at the time of appellate decision applies with equal force to criminal proceedings."”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"Evenhanded decision making requires that similiarly situated individuals on direct appeal be treated the same."”
2 later decisions 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.