Spencer v. Franks’s Empirical Analysis
1937
Citation profile
67 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 69 later decisions — most recently September 2002 · most notably Carroll County Department of Social Services v. Edelmann (1990), Poe v. Case (1978)
67 state decisions — followed in 15 states
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 Finlay v. Finlay · Bigelow v. Forrest · Barnes v. American Fertilizer Co. · Barnard v. Godfrey · Alston v. Thomas
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 69 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In the absence from the record of clear and satisfactory proof that the welfare of the child requires the intervention of the court to compel the adoptive parents to surrender temporarily but regularly the custody of the child to the natural mother, the court is of the opinion that the privilege of seeing the child should have been left to the discretion and determination of the adoptive parents.” (Emphasis supplied.) 173 Md. at 86 , 195 A. 306 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.