McCormick v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “A decree of adoption here would terminate forever all relations between [the daughter] and her natural father. For all purposes, legal and practical, she would be dead to [the natural father] and he would lose his right ever to see her again or ever to know of her whereabouts .... The [natural] father simply did not consent to such an adoption. The record clearly indicates that from the time that he first agreed to an adoption in the amendment of the New Jersey divorce decree, [the natural father] never intended to give up his parental rights. Although his signature did appear on the unconditional consent form, it was nevertheless conditioned upon the retention of these rights. * * * * * * The problem is that the preservation of these rights, even through an informal agreement, or on a goodwill basis, con flicts with the incident of complete control and custody of an adopted child by an adopting parent as contemplated by law. We cannot say that a consent conditioned upon the preservation of certain rights with respect to the child is sufficient to effectively establish the statutorily required consent. The severance of natural ties occasioned by adoption is of such obvious finality as to demand clear and unequivocal consent by a natural parent and we believe that [the natural father’s] consent here was insufficient.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Petition of SO