Law Commons^™

Military Law: Time To Mandate Best Interests Of The Child To Restrict Deployments Of Parents That Affect Preschool Children, John A. Lynch Jr.

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As America viewed the first massive deployment of its all-volunteer force at the beginning of the first Persian Gulf War, one journalist commented:

When this war is over, Americans need to do some serious thinking about the all-volunteer armed forces, the one legacy of the Vietnam War with which the nation seemed comfortable. Among other things, we have to decide whether a single parent, and, in many cases, both parents, should be deployed in war zones.

Is the nation's reliance on an army of volunteers worth the emotional grief that comes from ripping military parents away from their children? Do …

Child Custody Evaluations: Review Of The Literature And Annotated Bibliography, Barbara A. Babb, Gloria Danziger, Judith D. Moran, J. Mason Weeda, William A. Mack

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This review of custody evaluation literature encompasses a number of perspectives gleaned from the following: practitioners who perform the evaluations; the professional organizations that recognize the necessity to establish performance standards for practitioners; and the judges who depend on the findings and recommendations in the evaluations to assist with difficult custody decisions.

General agreement exists among practitioners about the components of a comprehensive evaluation (interviews of adults responsible for child care, interviews of children and their preferences, life histories, observations, psychological testing, document review, and collateral source data), though little consensus exists about the details of performance concerning a given …

Adoption, Elizabeth Samuels

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In historical terms, the legal institution of adoption in the United Slates is relatively new. It was between the mid-1800s and the 1920s that the states began to pass laws providing for the adoption of children. Before then children had been adopted informally and in some instances by individual legislative acts, or they had come to live with other families under indenture contracts or as a result of legislation authorizing charitable organizations to place children. Under these new adoption statutes, initially the court records of adoptions were not subject to confidentiality, and adopted children were not issued new birth certificates. …

Birth Certificates, Elizabeth Samuels

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Birth certificates in the United States, which are issued by the states, have two different sections, and each section involves different privacy concerns. The first section, the legal record of birth, is always available to the adult whose birth it registers; access by other persons varies widely from state to state, ranging from a short list of specified relatives to the public at large. The second section of the certificate - which records health and medical information about the parents, the birth, and the infant - is used only for data collection and analysis, under regulations that protect the privacy …

An Analysis Of Unified Family Courts In Maryland And California: Their Relevance For Ontario's Family Justice System, Barbara A. Babb

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The Ministry of the Attorney General of Ontario has contracted with the University of Baltimore School of Law's Center for Families, Children and the Courts to prepare this research paper. The purpose of the paper is to provide an overview of unified family courts and court-connected family services in two jurisdictions, Maryland and California, as agreed to by officials of the Ministry. The overview provides information about the structure of each jurisdiction's unified family court, family services connected to the court, the role of judicial and quasi-judicial officers, the assignment and specialization of the judiciary, rules or processes to deal …

Legal Images Of Motherhood: Conflicting Definitions From Welfare "Reform," Family And Criminal Law, Jane C. Murphy

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Part I of this Article explores the traditional idealized view of motherhood that child placement statutes and court decisions reflect. These laws include statutes and case law in custody disputes between parents and in child protection proceedings under civil and criminal laws where the dispute is between the parent and the state. Part II contrasts the legal construct of motherhood that child placement laws embody with the legal image of mothers in child support and welfare law.

Part III examines the impact of these conflicting images of motherhood on a particular group of mothers -- battered women. Battered women illuminate …