Commonwealth v. Cabeza’s Empirical Analysis
1983
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 174 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 182 later decisions — most recently August 2024 · most notably Commonwealth v. Grant (2002), Commonwealth v. Freeman (2003)
2 federal appellate · 174 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 Linkletter v. Walker · Michelson v. United States · United States v. Johnson · Brakeman v. Potomac Insurance Co. · Commonwealth v. Amos
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 182 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“where an appellate decision overrules prior law and announces a new principle, unless the decision specifically declares the ruling to be prospective only, the new rule is to be applied retroactively to cases where the issue in question is properly preserved at all stages of adjudication up to and including any direct appeal.”
24 later decisions quote this exact passage“In both cases, a.defense challenge to the ruling was raised during trial and the issue preserved and argued in post trial motions and on appeal. The only noteworthy difference between [Commonwealth v. Scott, 496 Pa. 188 , 436 A.2d 607 (1981),] and the appellee is that Scott was argued and decided first. The instant case may well have been the case which overruled prior law if Scott had not been decided while appellee’s appeal to the Superior Court was pending. The question of whether to apply an enlightened rule in favor of a discredited one should not be determined by the fortuity of who first has his case decided by an appellate court.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“although retroactivity is the general rule, a sweeping rule of retroactive application is not justified. Retroactive application is a matter of judicial discretion which must be exercised on a case by case basis.”
1 later decision 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.