In Re William L.’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 290 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 303 later decisions (8 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2024 · most notably Santosky v. Kramer (1982), Lehman Ex Rel. Lehman v. Lycoming County Children's Services Agency (1982)
4 federal appellate · 290 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 Roe v. Wade · Gault · Stanley v. Illinois · Dandridge v. Williams · Grayned v. City of Rockford
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 303 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In such circumstances, the issue is not whether the state should intrude to disrupt an on-going family relationship, but whether the state should seek to preserve in law a relationship which no longer exists in fact, with the result that the child is consigned indefinitely to the limbo of foster care or the impersonal care of institutions.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The repeated and continued incapacity, abuse, neglect or refusal of the parent has caused the child to be without essential parental care, control or subsistence necessary for his physical or mental well-being and the conditions and causes of the incapacity, abuse, neglect or refusal cannot or will not be remedied by the parent.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“a parent who is incapable of performing parental duties is just as parentally unfit as one who refuses to perform the duties.”
7 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.