Rosenthal v. Pleck’s Empirical Analysis
1918
Citation profile
18 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently March 2019
18 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 Ferguson v. Mason · Thomas v. Craft · Krakow v. Wille · Conrad v. Schwamb · Stodalka v. Novotny
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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is clear that the statute as it now stands declares every alienation by a married man of his homestead without his wife’s signature absolutely void, no matter in what form it may be made or what interest therein it may seek to alienate. . . . The statutory condemnation reaches every feature of the contract that involves the alienation of the homestead, to the end that no valid obligation for its alienation or of any interest therein, or for the incurring of any liability thereunder, can be made by the husband without the wife’s consent. The legislative thought was that it is contrary to public policy to permit the husband alone to alienate the homestead in any manner, or to incur any liability through an attempt to do so, because to stop short of that would be to emasculate the essential feature of the law, which is the conservation of the homestead for the family. If the husband could incur a liability in an attempt to alienate it, the liability might be more disastrous than the alienation. At any rate, such a liability might wring consent to convey from an unwilling wife, or, if not, be the occasion for grave domestic troubles. For these reasons the statute declares that no contract on his part alone to alienate the homestead or any interest therein ‘shall be valid or of any effect whatever/ ””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[T]he court cannot give life to that which the statute declares invalid.”
2 later decisions 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.