Clarke v. Lyon’s Empirical Analysis
1908
Citation profile
30 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 30 later decisions — most recently July 2018 · most notably Dewitt v. Brooks (1944), Vallimont v. Medford (1958)
30 state decisions — followed in 14 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 Norval v. Zinsmaster · Sturtevant v. State ex rel. Havens · Giles v. Giles · Schroeder v. State ex rel. Filbert · State ex rel. Filbert v. Schroeder
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 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We are aware that this court has several times asserted that in such controversies as the present the order should be made with sole reference to the best interests of the child. But this has been broad language applied to special cases. The court has never deprived a parent of the custody of a child merely because on financial or other grounds a stranger might better provide. The statute declares and nature demands that the right shall be in the parent, unless the parent be affirmatively unfit. The statute does not make the judges the guardians of all the children in the state, with power to take them from their parents, so long as the latter discharge their duties to the best of their ability, and give them to strangers because such strangers may be better able to provide what is already well provided. If that were the law, it would be soon changed, by revolution if necessary.”
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.