Sarver Adoption Case’s Empirical Analysis
1971
Citation profile
55 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 55 later decisions — most recently August 1999 · most notably 249 Pa. Super. 274 - In Re Custody of Hernandez (1977), In Re Adoption of McCray (1975)
55 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 Schwab Adoption Case · Harvey Adoption Case · Hunter Adoption Case · Rettew Adoption Case
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 55 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he termination by the law of a natural parent's rights to his child on the grounds of abandonment is one of the most severe steps the court can take. The finality of the termination and the harsh connotations of a finding of `abandonment' carry great emotional impact on both the child and the parent. For this reason, our law has been unwilling to tell a child that he has been `abandoned' by a natural parent, and has been unwilling to label a parent as one who has `abandoned' his child unless the record clearly warrants such a finding.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage““In order to sustain such a finding, it must appear that the parent intended to give up the child absolutely, never to claim it again, and that this intention was manifested for a period of at least six months. . . . Therefore, any action on the part of appellant within this period inconsistent with ‘a settled purpose’ to relinquish [his or] her parental claim to the child would preclude a finding of abandonment.””
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.