McBride v. McBride’s Empirical Analysis
1993
Citation profile
48 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 54 later decisions (6 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2018 · most notably Turner v. Rogers (2011), Turner v. Rogers (2011)
48 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 Mathews v. Eldridge · Morrissey v. Brewer · Gault · Gagnon v. Scarpelli · Lassiter v. Department of Social Services of Durham County North Carolina
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 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[w]hen a truly indigent defendant is jailed pursuant to a civil contempt order which calls upon him to do that which he cannot do-to pay child support arrearage which he is unable to pay-the deprivation of his physical liberty is no less than that of a criminal defendant who is incarcerated upon conviction of a criminal offense.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“In light of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Lassiter, we now hold that principles of due process embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment require that, absent the appointment of counsel, indigent civil contemnors may not be incarcerated for failure to pay child support arrearages.... At the outset of a civil contempt proceeding for nonsupport, the trial court should assess the likelihood that the defendant may be incarcerated. If the court determines that the defendant may be incarcerated as a result of the proceeding, the trial court should, in the interest of judicial economy, inquire into the defendant’s desire to be represented by counsel and into his ability to pay for legal representation. If such a defendant wishes representation but is unable due to his indigence to pay for such representation, the trial court must appoint counsel to represent him.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[T]he pre-eminent generalization that emerges from [the United States Supreme Court's] precedents on an indigent's right to appointed counsel is that such a right has been recognized to exist only where the litigant may lose his physical liberty if he loses the litigation.”
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.