State of Minnesota Pearson v. Probate Court of Ramsey County Minn’s Empirical Analysis
309 U.S. 270 · 1940
Citation profile
146 federal appellate · 39 district · 309 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 622 later decisions (42 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2018 · most notably Gault (1967), Kolender v. Lawson (1983)
146 federal appellate · 39 district · 309 state decisions — followed in 30 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 Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co. · West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish · Nash v. United States · Semler v. Oregon State Board of Dental Examiners
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 622 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It would not be reasonable to apply the provisions of the statute to every person guilty of sexual misconduct nor even to persons having strong sexual propensities. Such a definition would not only make the act impracticable of enforcement and perhaps unconstitutional in its application, but would also be an unwarranted departure from the accepted meanings of the words defined.”
19 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Miller v. Overholser · In Re Irwin“[T]he existence in any person of such conditions of emotional instability, or impulsiveness of behavior, or lack of customary standards of good judgment, or failure to appreciate the consequences of personal acts, or a combination of any such conditions, as to render such person irresponsible for personal conduct with respect to sexual matters and thereby dangerous to other persons.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“If the law presumably hits the evil where it is most felt, it is not to be overthrown because there are other instances to which it might have been applied.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.