Watts v. Watts’s Empirical Analysis
1908
Citation profile
33 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions — most recently May 1971 · most notably Reynolds v. Reynolds (1961), Swint v. Smith (1964)
33 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 Ansley Co. v. O'Byrne · Head v. Head · Epps & Leabow v. Buckmaster
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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A divorce suit affects not merely the formal parties before the court, but society at large. . . On account of the peculiar interest of the public in the preservation of domestic relations provisions have been made by the Constitution of this State, and by legislative enactment, which take divorce suits out of the rules that govern other actions, and place restrictions around them indicating a policy to hinder facility in the procurement of divorces.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Reynolds v. Reynolds“shall be brought in the county where the defendant resides, if a resident of this State; if the defendant be not a resident of this State, then in the county in which the plaintiff resides. . .”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Reynolds v. Reynolds
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.