Benton v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1995
Citation profile
20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently June 2019
20 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 Jackson v. Virginia · Williams v. State · Smith v. State · Maxwell v. State · Hart v. Wharton
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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The incest taboo is one of the most important human cultural developments. It is found in some form in all societies. This universal proscription restricts intercourse, and hence marriage, among close relatives. Being primarily cultural in origin, the taboo is neither instinctual nor biological, and it has very little to do with actual blood ties. This is evidenced by the fact that the taboo is often violated — people generally are incapable of violating their instincts — and because society condemned incest long before people knew of its genetic effects. Modern anthropologists and comparative sociologists claim that the significance of the incest taboo is twofold. First, the restriction forces family members to go outside their families to find sexual partners. Requiring people to pursue relationships outside family boundaries helps form important economic and political alliances and makes a large society possible. A second purpose for the taboo ... is maintaining the stability of the family hierarchy by protecting young family members from exploitation by older family members in positions of authority, and by reducing the competition and jealous friction among family members.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“prior accusations of sexual misconduct directed against persons other than the defendant”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. FRYE v. the STATE.“[t]he rape-shield law ... does not necessarily prohibit”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. FRYE v. the STATE.
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.