In re Clark’s Empirical Analysis
1962
Citation profile
17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 21 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2022
17 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.
““ ‘But in our humble Civil Court we must confine ourselves to the civil law of the State. Religious doctrines and dogmas, be they obviously sound or curiously dubious, may not control. The parents in this case have a perfect right to worship.as they please and believe what they please. They enjoy complete freedom of religion. The parents also have the right to use all lawful means to vindicate this right * * * “ ‘But this right of theirs ends where somebody else’s right begins. Their child is a human being in his own right, with a soul and body of his own. He has rights of his own —the right to live and grow up without disfigurement (emphasis supplied). “ ‘The child is a citizen of the State. While he “belongs” to his parents, he belongs also to his State. Their rights in him entail many duties. Likewise the fact the child beongs to the State imposes upon the State many duties. Chief among them is the duty to protect his right to live and to grow up with a sound mind in a sound body, and to brook no interference with that right by any person or organization (emphasis supplied). “ ‘When a religious doctrine espoused by the parents threatens to defeat or curtail such a right of their child, the State’s duty to step in and preserve the child’s right is immediately operative. “ ‘To put it another way, when a child’s right to live and his parents’ religious belief collide, the former is paramount, and the religious doctrine must give way.’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Harley v. Oliver““To a layman unversed in the seemingly esoteric art of theological interpretation of the 17th century English version of ancient Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, these passages are, to say the least, somewhat obscure. They have to do with blood and the eating or taking thereof. Blood transfusion as administered by modern medicine”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Harley v. Oliver
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.