Hitchens v. Hitchens’s Empirical Analysis
1942
Citation profile
5 district · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently March 1974
5 district · 5 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 Davis v. Davis · Cunningham v. . Cunningham · Maier Hanson v. Hanson · Reifschneider v. Reifschneider · Harrison v. State ex rel. Harrison
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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It shall be unlawful within the State for any female below the age of sixteen years ... to marry . . . or for any female between the ages of sixteen and eighteen years, or for any male under the age of twenty-one years to marry, unless the parent or guardian of such male or female, in person or by signed affidavit, assent thereto. . . .””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““It would appear reasonable to assume that had the legislature intended such a consequence the statute, since it was changed, would have so provided. Similarly, in reading the entire statute it is to be noted that the ‘it shall be unlawful’ provision is used in the same sentence both as applying to the parties to the marriage ceremony and to the parent or guardian conniving in the marriage of a party that is under the minimum age of consent. This lends weight to the suggestion that the statute may be construed properly as ‘in terrorem’ only, and that while the Maryland legislature has sought to discourage marriages in this age group without parental consent, a lack of such consent does not necessarily make the contracted marriage invalid.””
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.