Brooks v. Parkerson’s Empirical Analysis
1995
Citation profile
139 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 139 later decisions — most recently February 2025 · most notably Roth v. Weston (2002), In Re Custody of Smith (2000)
139 state decisions — followed in 24 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 Santosky v. Kramer · Stanley v. Illinois · Meyer v. State of Nebraska · Wisconsin v. Yoder · Pierce v. Society of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary Same
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 139 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“state interference with parental rights to custody and control of children is permissible only where the health or welfare of a child is threatened.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage“even assuming grandparent visitation promotes the health and welfare of the child, the state may only impose that visitation over the parents' objections on a showing that failing to do so would be harmful to the child.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“The presumption that children ordinarily belong in the care and custody of their parents is not merely a presumption of the statutory and common law, but it has roots in the fundamental constitutional rights of parents. The Constitution secures the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children, and it protects a private realm of family life which the state cannot enter without compelling justification.”
3 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.