Commonwealth v. Mayfield’s Empirical Analysis
2003
Citation profile
64 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 68 later decisions — most recently December 2022 · most notably State v. McKenzie-Adams (2007), Commonwealth v. Davidson (2007)
64 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 Griswold v. State of Connecticut · Connally v. General Construction Co. · Kolender v. Lawson · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. Y Button · Meyer v. State of Nebraska
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 68 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A statute is overbroad if by its reach it punishes a substantial amount of constitutionally-protected conduct. If the overbreadth of the statute is substantial, judged in relation to its legitimate sweep, it may not be enforced against anyone until it is narrowed to reach only unprotected activity. The function of overbreadth adjudication, however, attenuates as the prohibited behavior moves from pure speech towards conduct, where the conduct falls within the scope of otherwise valid criminal laws that reflect legitimate state interests.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[t]he void-for-vagueness doctrine requires that a penal statute define the criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage““The terms of a penal statute creating a new offense must be sufficiently explicit to inform those who are subject to it what conduct on their part will render them liable to its penalties ... [A] statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application violates the first essential of due process law.” “The void-for-vagueness doctrine requires that a penal statute define the criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.” Due process is satisfied if the statute provides reasonable standards by which a person may gauge his future conduct.”
3 later decisions 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.