In Re Willis’s Empirical Analysis
1974
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 89 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 90 later decisions — most recently April 2019 · most notably 194 W. Va. 138 - Chrystal R.M. v. Charlie A.L. (1995), 190 W. Va. 24 - In Re Jeffrey R.L. (1993)
1 federal appellate · 89 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 Gault · Stanley v. Illinois · Kent v. United States · Kovacs v. Cooper · United States v. Thirty-Seven (37) Photographs
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 90 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In the law concerning custody of minor children, no rule is more firmly established than that the right of a natural parent to the custody of his or her infant child is paramount to that of any other person; it is a fundamental personal liberty protected and guaranteed by the Due Process Clauses of the West Virginia and United States Constitutions.”
24 later decisions quote this exact passage“[o]nce a court exercising proper jurisdiction has made a determination upon sufficient proof that a child has been neglected and his natural parents were so derelict in their duties as to be unfit, the welfare of the infant is the polar star by which the discretion of the court is to be guided in making its award of legal custody.”
12 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. In re: J.G., II · State v. T.C.“'this Court held in the case of In re: Sutton , 132 W. Va. 875 , 53 S.E.2d 839 (1949), a parent could not be divested of his parental rights without notice and opportunity for a hearing when such parent was subject to the jurisdiction of the court and available for service of process; and any such hearing held divesting the parent of his rights to his child resulting in a decree, was void and of no effect. This is the undoubted law in this jurisdiction and elsewhere, mandated by our own as well as the Federal Constitution, and it operates to prevent the permanent termination of parental rights without according the full range of due process guarantees to the affected persons.'”
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.