Hack v. Hack’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 78 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 84 later decisions — most recently October 2014 · most notably Dercoli v. Pennsylvania National Mutual Insurance (1989), Snider v. Thornburgh (1981)
4 federal appellate · 78 state decisions — followed in 11 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 Eisenstadt v. Baird · Trammel v. United States · Griffith v. United Air Lines, Inc. · Webb v. Zern · Ayala v. Philadelphia Board of Public Education
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 84 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“One of the great virtues of the common law is its dynamic nature that makes it adaptable to the requirements of society at the time of its application in court. There is not a rule of the common law in force today that has not evolved from some earlier rule of common law, gradually in some instances, more suddenly in others, leaving the common law of today when compared with the common law of centuries ago as different as day is from night. The nature of the common law requires that each time a rule of law is applied it be carefully scrutinized to make sure that the conditions and needs of the times have not so changed as to make further application of it the instrument of injustice. Dean Pound posed the problem admirably in his Interpretations of Legal History (1922) when he stated, ‘Law must be stable, and yet it cannot stand still.’”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. S.A.V. v. K.G.V. · Sav v. Kgv“[A] tortfeasor’s immunity from liability because of his marital relationship with the injured party cannot be sustained on the basis of law, logic or public policy. Hence we abrogate the judicially-created doctrine of interspousal immunity.”) 6 . The source of the”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Any presumption of identity of interest is based upon the same outmoded social conditions and policy as was the common law legal fiction of unity of person of husband and wife. ..... Modern conditions demand that courts no longer engage in the automatic and unsupported assumption that one's pecuniary or proprietary interest is identical to that of one's spouse.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Snider v. Thornburgh
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.