Bernacki v. Superior Construction Co.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The question that we must determine is whether or not there is a rational relationship to a legitimate state purpose in those portions of the statute which classified acknowledged and unacknowledged illegitimate children differently. In our judgment, there is a very valid and clear purpose in such classification. Chief Judge Buchanan observed that ‘Requiring acknowledgment decreases the problem of locating illegitimate children and determining questionable claims of parenthood....’ The legitimate state purpose is even more glaring with respect to children born posthumously. It has been urged that, because of the alleged father’s untimely death, he had no opportunity to acknowledge the child. We hasten to add that neither did he have an opportunity to deny it. To declare unconstitutional the acknowledgment requirement of the Act would not only create a class of recipients never contemplated by the Legislature, it would open wide the door to posthumous claims of paternity impossible of defense.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. S.M v. v. Littlepage · Garza v. Maverick Market, Inc.