People v. Meredith’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently September 2009
4 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 United States v. Robinson · Gustafson v. Florida · People v. District Court, Second Judicial District · People v. Guenther · Engelbrecht v. Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co.
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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A)s a general rule, the word 'may' will not be treated as a word of command unless there is something in [the] context or subject matter of [the] act to indicate that it was used in such sense. In construction of statutes ... 'may' as opposed to 'shall is indicative of discretion or choice between two or more alternatives.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“A police officer always has the statutory authority to arrest an individual whom the officer observes committing a misdemeanor.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. People v. Triantos“The use of the term 'may' in legislative authority is generally permissive or directory.”
1 later decision 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.