Commonwealth v. Constant’s Empirical Analysis
2007
Citation profile
14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently March 2025
14 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 Duncan v. State of Louisiana · United States v. Dixon · Press-Enterprise Company v. Superior Court of California Riverside County · Commonwealth v. Smith · Commonwealth v. Melton
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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[wjhere trial courts perceive a threat to the orderly administration of justice in their courtrooms by an unmanageable public, they may always place reasonable restrictions on access to the courtroom, so long as the basic guarantees of fairness are preserved such as by the presence of the press and the making of a record for later review.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“Constant directs this Court’s attention to several federal court decisions regarding the attendance of family members at court proceedings. Constant cited no Pennsylvania state court decisions supporting his contention. See Commonwealth v. Giffin, 407 Pa.Super. 15 , 595 A.2d 101, 107 (1991) (stating that in the absence of a ruling on a particular question by the United States Supreme Court, the decision of a federal intermediate appellate panel or a federal district court is not binding on Pennsylvania courts). We decline to apply the federal court’s holdings under the circumstances presented in this case.”
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.