Caban v. Mohammed’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
125 federal appellate · 12 district · 809 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,121 later decisions (63 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably City of Cleburne Texas v. Cleburne Living Center (1985), Cannon v. University of Chicago (1979)
125 federal appellate · 12 district · 809 state decisions — followed in 46 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 Edelman v. Jordan · Stanley v. Illinois · Dandridge v. Williams · San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez · Reynolds v. Sims
Cited together with Lehr v. Robertson · Stanley v. Illinois · Quilloin v. Walcott · Craig v. Boren · Meyer v. State of Nebraska
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 1,121 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“com[ing] forward to participate in the rearing of his child,”
42 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Parental rights do not spring full-blown from the biological connection between parent and child. They require relationships more enduring.”
21 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[g]ender-based distinctions `must serve important governmental objectives and must be substantially related to achievement of those objectives' in order to withstand judicial scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause.”
13 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.