Bennett v. Northcutt’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently January 2004
20 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 Gibbs v. General Motors Corporation · Wagner v. Riske · Jones v. Strayhorn · Landry v. Travelers Insurance Company · Mumma v. Aguirre
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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he courts have generally recognized that a protesting father has a protectable interest in having his child bear his surname, and they will exercise the power to change the name reluctantly and only where the substantial welfare of the child requires the change.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. In Re CBM
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.