Smith v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1968
Citation profile
13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently June 2000
13 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 North v. North · Hayes v. Hayes · Waters v. Waters · Hurley v. Hurley · Noll v. Noll
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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ * * * The decision of a trial court in custody matters, when tested by appeal, comes weighted with the inference that the court has properly exercised its judicial discretion in determining the best interests of the child, and unless such discretion has been abused, or unless we can point to some reason for not deferring to the findings of the trial court or, of course, unless this court is convinced that the welfare of the child requires some other disposition, the decree should not be disturbed.””
2 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.