Brown v. Matthews’s Empirical Analysis
1887
Citation profile
168 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 168 later decisions — most recently October 2019 · most notably Felker v. State (1984), 114 Ga. App. 367 - Cabaniss v. Hipsley (1966)
168 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 Burnside v. Terry · Goodnow v. Hill
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 168 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“... It is not necessary that the evidence should shine upon it with a clear light. It is enough if glimpses of it be afforded by the evidence. Truth is often dim, but is truth nevertheless. Frequently amongst the facts best proved is one which no witness has mentioned in his testimony, such fact being an inference from other facts.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“A charge, torn to pieces and scattered in disjointed fragments, may seem objectionable, although when put together and considered as a whole, it may be perfectly sound. The full charge being in the record, what it lacks when divided is supplied when the parts are all united.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“It not unfrequently happens that the testimony proves more than any one witness knows, or than is known to all the witnesses taken together. This is so perhaps in every instance where the evidence, though sufficient, is only circumstantial. Where the evidence is all direct, the jury can be no wiser than the witnesses, but they have to be wiser in order to find the truth of any fact upon circumstantial evidence alone. . . Frequently amongst the facts best proved is one which no witness has mentioned in his testimony, such fact being an inference from other facts.”
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.