Swarens v. Swarens’s Empirical Analysis
1908
Citation profile
21 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 21 later decisions — most recently April 2003
21 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.
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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The law regards the father, where, as in this case, the mother is not living, as the rightful custodian of his child as against the claims of all others. This right might, of course, be forfeited by conduct of the father showing him to be manifestly unfit to have the custody and care of his child. Courts, in the interest of minor children, may take them from their parents and place them elsewhere, even in the custody of strangers; but in the exercise of this extraordinary power the rights of the parent must be recognized and protected.” (p. 684.) •”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Pinney v. Sulzen
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.