State v. ROBERT H. ____’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 2 district · 89 state decisions

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 96 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Too often under current practice, there is no direction or incentive for parents or agency to work towards return of the child. The court rarely, if ever, requires a plan and does not review the case to see what is being done. The pressures of agency workload, aggravated by inadequate staff and financing, are such that as long as a child in place-, ment raises no problems, he/she will not get any attention. Dealing with the parents may be time-consuming and, according to the agency’s priorities, unproductive. If a child is not having difficulty in placement, the agency may consider it to be in the child’s “best interest” to remain in placement, even if the child would now be safe in his/her own home. Therefore, no effort is made to work towards return. To be consistent with the underlying goals of these standards — that children’s interests are generally best served by assuring them a continuous safe home with their parents — it is imperative that any plan for removal include clear commitments by parents and agency to take the necessary action to return the child to a safe home.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. In Re Shannon R.

2. ““The Court has frequently emphasized the importance of the family. The rights to conceive and raise one’s children have been deemed ‘essential,’ . . . ‘basic civil rights of man,’ . . . and ‘[r]ights far more precious . . . than property rights.’ ... ‘It is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder.’ . . . The integrity of the family unit has found protection in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, . . . the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, . . . and the Ninth Amendment.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Case v. Case

3. “[i]n an ideal world, children would not be brought up in inadequate homes. But this is not an ideal world, and to hold merely that inadequate parenting, absent specific harm to the children, is sufficient to terminate parental rights in the best interest of the child is too vague a concept and places undue emphasis on the parental conduct rather than on any harm to the child.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. In re Bill F.