Walker v. Gardner’s Empirical Analysis
1960
Citation profile
71 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 73 later decisions — most recently August 2017 · most notably In Re Adoption/Guardianship No. 3598 (1997), In Re Adoption/Guardianship No. 10941 (1994)
71 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 Winter v. Director of the Department of Public Welfare · Alston v. Thomas · Lagumis v. Ex Parte, Adoption of Lagumis · King v. Shandrowski
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 73 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A]doption decrees cut the child off from the natural parent, who is made a legal stranger to his offspring. The consequences of this drastic and permanent severing of the strongest and basic natural ties and relationships has led the Legislature and this Court to make sure, as far as possible, that adoption shall not be granted over parental objection unless that course clearly is justified. The welfare and best interests of the child must be weighed with great care against every just claim of an objecting parent.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. (2005) · Watson v. Dockett
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.