Lalli v. Lalli’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
95 federal appellate · 27 district · 449 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 752 later decisions (26 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2024 · most notably City of Cleburne Texas v. Cleburne Living Center (1985), Plyler v. Doe (1982)
95 federal appellate · 27 district · 449 state decisions — followed in 42 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 Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City · Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. · Trimble v. Gordon · Levy v. Louisiana Ex Rel. Charity Hospital · Mathews v. Lucas
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 752 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Accuracy is enhanced by placing paternity disputes in a judicial forum during the lifetime of the father ... The availability of the putative father should be a substantial factor contributing to the reliability of the fact-finding process ... In addition, requiring that the order be issued during the father's lifetime permits a man to defend his reputation against unjust accusations in paternity claims ... Fraudulent assertions of paternity will be much less likely to succeed, or even to arise, where the proof is put before a court of law at a time when the putative father is available to respond, rather than first brought to light when the distribution of assets of an estate is in the offing.”
34 later decisions quote this exact passage“effected a total statutory disinheritance of children born out of wedlock who were not legitimated by the subsequent marriage of their parents.”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage“classifications based on illegitimacy . . . are invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment if they are not substantially related to permissible state interests”
3 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.