United States v. McCarty’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 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 3 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Under Oklahoma law of descent and distribution, if any person die seized of any estate which is not limited by marriage contract or testamentary disposition, leaving a surviving-spouse and one child, the estate must, descend to the surviving spouse and. one child in equal shares. 84 O.S.A.. § 213. Fred Norton, not having been legally divorced from Sallie Norton,, was her lawful husband at the time of her decease, although he had long since-abandoned her and entered into a pretended marriage with .another woman. Copeland v. Copeland, 73 Okla. 252 , 175 P. 764 ; Cox v. Cox, 95 Okla. 14 , 217 P. 493, 495 , 34 A.L.R. 432 . It. follows therefore that under the mandate of the statute, he is entitled to share equally with the son in the lands of Sallie Norton as a surviving husband, unless by his unfaithful and unworthy conduct he is estopped to assert his statutory right. “This identical question was squarely presented to the Oklahoma Supreme Court in Cox v. Cox, supra, and the-majority held that unless forbidden by statute, one spouse did not forfeit his- or her statutory right to inherit from the deceased spouse although he or she may have abandoned the deceased spouse long before and entered into a pretended marriage relationship with another. The court said it had ⅛0 alternative except to follow the rules of descent or succession as prescribed by the legislative branch of the government,’ citing with approval the case of Nolan v. Doss, 133 Ala. 259 , 31 So. 969 , 970, in which”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Norton v. Coffield