Hamby v. Jacobson’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently January 2025
20 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 Northern Pipeline Construction Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co. · Federal Power Commission v. Louisiana Power & Light Co. · State v. Walker · Bobo v. Jewell · American Petroleum Institute v. Gorsuch
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.
“[When] examin[ing] the trial court’s ultimate finding that it was in the child[’s] best interest[ ] to bear the surname [Christensen,] ... [w]e review the trial court’s findings under a clearly erroneous standard and will not disturb those findings unless they are against the clear weight of the evidence, or if the appellate court otherwise reaches a definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been made.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“1) the child’s preference in light of the child’s age and experience, 2) the effect of a name change on the development and preservation of the child’s relationship with each parent, 3) the length of time a child has used a name, 4) the difficulties, harassment or embarrassment a child may experience from bearing the present or proposed name, 5) the possibility that a different name may cause insecurity and lack of identity, and 6) the motive or interests of the custodial parent.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[Wlhen the evi-denee consists only of proffers to the trial court, the appellate court is in as good a position to review the proffer as was the trial court, as no assessment of witness credibility occurred below.”
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.