Commonwealth v. Hammer’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
56 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 56 later decisions — most recently October 2011 · most notably Commonwealth v. Grant (2002), Harman Ex Rel. Harman v. Borah (2000)
56 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 Quercia v. United States · Commonwealth v. Hubbard · Commonwealth v. Clair · Lakeside v. Oregon · Commonwealth v. Goosby
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 56 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] judge who poses a question or makes a comment during trial is predisposed to believe that the question or comment is proper, lest it not be spoken. Given that predisposition, the likelihood that the judge will be well-cautioned by counsel’s objection is negligible. In that context, the rationale underlying the waiver doctrine, that timely objection gives the court the opportunity to cure the error, becomes a relatively empty one. Indeed, the possibility exists that counsel’s objection will be viewed as a source of annoyance and may well aggravate the situation.”
4 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.