Davis v. Davis’s Empirical Analysis
1975
Citation profile
46 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 47 later decisions — most recently December 2015 · most notably Estate of Claveria v. Claveria (1981), Chandler v. Chandler (1992)
46 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 Hurtado v. People of the State of California · Grigsby v. Reib · Billings v. Atkinson · Dickson v. Strickland · Texas Employers' Insurance Ass'n v. Elder
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 47 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The common law of England was conformable to 'the law of Nature, the law of God, to common sense, to legal reason, justice, and humanity.’ Broom, Commentaries on the Common Law, p. 21, (4th ed. 1869). Calvin's Case, 7 Co. la, 77, Eng.Rept. 377, 391 et seq. (K.B.1608); Forbes v. Cochrane, 107 Eng.Rep. 450, 455, 458 et seq. (K.B.1824). Lord Mansfield proclaimed the basis of this very rule to be 'decency, morality and policy.' The system and tradition that we call the 'common law’ is not a body of law which evolved within historic England or a bygone age to stand immutable ever afterward. It is the guide and governance of this Court today — in the absence of a mandate of the Constitution or statute. Learned Hand said that our common law is 'a combination of custom and its successive adaptations. The judges receive it and profess to treat it as authoritative, while they gently mould it the better to fit changed ideas.' THE SPIRIT OF LIBERTY p. 52 (1952). 'This flexibility and capacity for growth and adaptation is the peculiar boast and excellence of the common law.’ Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S. 516, 530 , 4 S.Ct. 111, 118 , 28 L.Ed. 232 (1884). '(A)s life is always in flux, so the common law, which is merely life’s explanation as the lawyer and the judge, law’s spokesmen, are always making it, must also be.’ Hutcheson, The Common Law of the Constitution, 15 Tex.L.Rev. 317, 319 (1937).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““The Rule [Lord Mansfield’s Rule] has never prevented proof of non-access of spouses for a determination of illegitimacy of a child born or conceived during wedlock. The exclusion has only applied to testimony of the spouses themselves. Proof of illegitimacy has been made more difficult, but there is no rule of law that prevents the fact from being shown if other evidence is available.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Thompson v. Thompson
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.