Boyd v. Boyd’s Empirical Analysis
1930
Citation profile
15 federal appellate · 2 district · 112 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 153 later decisions (10 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2016 · most notably Wainwright v. Witt (1985), Marshall v. Lonberger (1983)
15 federal appellate · 2 district · 112 state decisions — followed in 10 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 Exchange Bakery & Restaurant, Inc. v. Rifkin · Prager v. New Jersey Fidelity & Plate Glass Insurance Co. of Newark · Forstmann v. Joray Holding Co., Inc. · Matter of Flagler
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 153 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Face to face with living witnesses the original trier of facts holds a position of advantage from which appellate judges are excluded. In doubtful cases the exercise of his power of observation often proves the most accurate method of ascertaining the truth .... How can we say the judge is wrong? We never saw the witnesses .... To the sophistication and sagacity of the trial judge the law confines the duty of appraisal.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage““The validity of any alleged common-law marriage is always open to suspicion. Especially is doubt justified when one of the parties is dead. Clear, consistent, and convincing evidence is required to establish the fact.””
1 later decision 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.