Briggs v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1886
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 33 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 35 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2016 · most notably Trono v. United States (1905), Snyder v. Commonwealth (1961)
1 federal appellate · 33 state decisions — followed in 11 states
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 Joy v. State · Jones v. Commonwealth · State v. Hughes · Younger v. State · Cochrane v. State
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 35 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In principle, life and liberty stand on substantially one foundation, life being valueless without liberty. And the reason why a man may not oppose an attempt on his liberty by the same extreme measures permissible in an attempt on his life, may be because liberty may be secured by a resort to the laws. ... So, one who, excited in resisting the outrage of an illegal arrest, kills the aggressor with a deadly weapon, commits only manslaughter, unless acting from express malice.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Symes“The common law of England was brought to Virginia by our ancestors”
1 later decision 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.