James v. James’s Empirical Analysis
1970
Citation profile
15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently February 2005
15 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 Rallihan v. Motschmann · Galilean Children's Home, Inc. v. Ball · Reynardus v. Garcia
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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Accordingly, we hold that the natural parent is entitled to the custody of his child unless it is shown that the natural parent (1) is unsuitable to have custody, or (2) is harmful to the child, or (3) has contracted to give his child away, or is clearly estopped to claim custody.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Bond v. Shepherd
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.