Dewitt v. Brooks’s Empirical Analysis
1944
Citation profile
78 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 79 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2008 · most notably Armstrong v. Manzo (1965), Gunn v. Cavanaugh (1965)
78 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 Legate v. Legate · State Ex Rel. Wood v. Deaton · Nugent v. Powell · Farnham v. Pierce · People Ex Rel. Riesner v. New York Nursery & Child's Hospital
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 79 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The power of the State to so adjudge a child to be dependent where'the facts warrant it, without notice to the parents where they are inaccessible, must necessarily exist because of the exigencies of the case. Children of tender years who have been abandoned or neglected and are in distress cannot wait for attention indefinitely while search is being made throughout the country for their parents and service is had on them . . . But where the parents are without notice of the pro ceedings, they must be allowed a full hearing in a subsequent proceeding on the issue of whether sufficient facts existed as to authorize the entry of the judgment of dependency.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““While ordinarily the natural parents are entitled to the custody and care of their child, this is not an absolute unconditional right. The State has such an interest in the welfare of its citizens as will authorize the enactment of suitable legislation by which the State may assume the custody of children and the parents may be deprived of the custody thereof where the parents abandon the children or neglect them in such manner as to cause them to become a public charge, or where the parents otherwise prove to be unsuitable.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Nelson v. Nelson““In determining whether or not Brooks and wife had so abandoned the child as to allow it to become a dependent and neglected child within the meaning of the statute, the trial court had the right to consider not only the facts that transpired prior to the adjudication of dependency, but also the facts that occurred subsequent thereto, as circumstances showing the intention of Mr. and Mrs. Brooks on the issue of prior abandonment.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Grider v. Noonan
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.