Stanley v. Illinois

Status

115 later cases cite Stanley v. Illinois; 115 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Treatments

Limited

• The Supreme Court held that Stanley did not require an unwed father who had never exercised or sought custody to receive an absolute veto over his child's adoption; under those circumstances, the child's best interests were enough.

  Quilloin v. Walcott · Supreme Court of the United States · filed March 6, 1978

  Stanley left unresolved the degree of protection a State must afford to the rights of an unwed father in a situation, such as that presented here, in which the countervailing interests are more substantial. . . . But this is not a case in which the unwed father at any time had, or sought, actual or legal custody of his child. Nor is this a case in which the proposed adoption would place the child with a new set of parents with whom the child had never before lived. Rather, the result of the adoption in this case is to give full recognition to a family unit already in existence, a result desired by all concerned, except appellant. Whatever might be required in other situations, we cannot say that the State was required in this situation to find anything more than that the adoption, and denial of legitimation, were in the “best interests of the child.”

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• The New York Surrogate's Court declined to extend Stanley's adoption-notice protection to a completely unknown and unidentified putative father.

  In re the Adoption of E. W. C. · Surrogate's Court, Nassau County, New York · filed November 24, 1976

  In Stanley v Illinois (405 US 645), a case which has caused widespread controversy over the rights of unmarried fathers, the father was readily identifiable since he had maintained an intermittent relationship with the mother over an extended period of 18 years. . . . Here, the father is no more than a phantom, resurrected at the eleventh hour in an attempt to create a jurisdictional defect. Nowhere in any of the papers, including the birth certificate, is the father’s name even mentioned. . . . No notice of any kind directed to the father who is completely unknown and unidentified will be required.

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• The New Jersey Appellate Division declined to extend Stanley's parental-rights principle to a parent's waiver of a child's substantial future tort remedies.

  Hojnowski v. Vans Skate Park · New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division · filed March 10, 2005

  Although we acknowledge that fundamental right to exist, as we must (see, e.g. Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 65-66, 120 S.Ct. 2054, 2060, 147 L.Ed.2d 49, 56-57 (2000)), we do not read the precedent defining that right (as does our colleague) as encompassing a decision such as this to forego substantial tort remedies, a decision that we find to be different from such fundamental concerns as establishment of a home, upbringing and education, religion, or medical care. See, e.g., Parham v. J.R., 442 U.S. 584, 604, 99 S.Ct. 2493, 2505, 61 L.Ed.2d 101, 120 (1979)(mental hospital institutionalization); Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 499, 97 S.Ct. 1932, 1935-36, 52 L.Ed.2d 531, 537 (1977) (family living arrangements); Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 214, 92 S.Ct. 1526, 1532, 32 L.Ed.2d 15, 24 (1972) (freedom of religion in light of compulsory education); Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645, 651, 92 S.Ct. 1208, 1212, 31 L.Ed.2d 551, 558-59 (1972) (termination of parental rights).

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