McKinney v. Weeks’s Empirical Analysis
1961
Citation profile
5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently October 1991
5 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 Violet Van Natta Ide v. City of St. Cloud · Barwin v. Reidy · Lee v. Thomas Et Ux · Rhodes v. Shirley · Las Vegas Sun, Inc. v. Franklin
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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"Since adoption may be refused to petitioners who have the strongest endorsement of the parents, we think it follows that the office of the requirement of consent for adoption is to indicate the willingness of the parents that the natural relationship be swept away and a new one created in its stead. The giving of consent is indicative of the subjective state of mind of the parents expressive only of the individuals and binding no one unless the court shall choose to act thereon. It is up to the court to perform the objective acts of severing the natural relationship and creating an artificial status by judicial determination. As it may or may not decree adoption in favor of persons recommended by the natural parents, it seems most unlikely the legislature intended to impose as a condition to the exercise of the court's jurisdiction knowledge of the identity of petitioners in adoption on the part of the natural parents, because even when that circumstance exists, and possibly the further circumstance that the natural parents have investigated the qualifications of the petitioners and given them their unqualified approval, the court may still refuse to decree adoption, the selection of a foster parent being a judicial act and the responsibility being that of the court."”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Service of process shall be unnecessary when a written consent is filed with the petition or thereafter executed in the presence of two witnesses and acknowledged before an officer authorized by law to take acknowledgments by: (1) The living parent or parents of a child born in wedlock, or the living mother of a child born out of wedlock,”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Pole v. Bowen
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.