Irwin v. Irwin’s Empirical Analysis
1962
Citation profile
36 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 36 later decisions — most recently January 1994 · most notably In Re Marriage of Franks (1975), Wright v. Wright (1973)
36 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.
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 36 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"The husband and wife were competent to enter into a binding contract settling all of their own differences and fixing the rights and duties of each toward the other. Clearly the parties substituted contractual rights and duties for claimed rights and duties which were then the subject of litigation and undetermined. "Constitutional provisions inhibit the passage of any law impairing the obligation of contracts. A fortiori the judiciary cannot relieve parties to a fair and binding contract from the obligations thereof, or deny them the rights granted. The order of the court [modifying the agreement of the parties] ignores the solemn and binding contract of the parties, a contract the manifest purposes of which were to avoid the courts and determine their affairs by mutual agreement."”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.