Commonwealth v. Contakos’s Empirical Analysis
1982
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 32 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 34 later decisions — most recently June 2013 · most notably Commonwealth v. Gibson (2008), Commonwealth v. Fenstermaker (1987)
2 federal appellate · 32 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 In re Oliver · Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia · Estes v. Texas · Gannett Co Inc v. A
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 34 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The historical basis for public trials and the interests which are protected by provisions such as Pennsylvania’s open trial mandate have been well researched and discussed in two recent opinions of the United States Supreme Court, Gannett Co. v. DePasquale, 443 U.S. 368 , 99 S.Ct. 2898 , 61 L.Ed.2d 608 (1979), and Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, supra, and can be briefly summarized as follows: generally, to assure the public that justice is done even-handedly and fairly; to discourage perjury and the misconduct of participants; to prevent decisions based on secret bias or partiality; to prevent individuals from feeling that the law should be taken into the hands of private citizens; to satisfy the natural desire to see justice done; to provide for community catharsis; to promote public confidence in government and assurance that the system of judicial remedy does in fact work; to promote the stability of government by allowing access to its workings, thus assuring citizens that government and the courts are worthy of their continued loyalty and support; to promote an understanding of our system of government and courts. These considerations, which were applied by the United States Supreme Court in its analysis of the First and Sixth Amendments in Gannett and Richmond Newspapers apply equally to our analysis of Pennsylvania’s constitutional mandate that courts shall be open and that an accused shall have the right to a public trial.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.