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Full-Text Articles in Family Law
The Child Vanishes: Justice Scalia's Approach To The Role Of Psychology In Determining Children's Rights And Responsibilities, Aviva Orenstein
The Child Vanishes: Justice Scalia's Approach To The Role Of Psychology In Determining Children's Rights And Responsibilities, Aviva Orenstein
Articles by Maurer Faculty
This Article explores how Justice Antonin Scalia’s hostility to psychology, antipathy to granting children autonomous rights, and dismissiveness of children’s interior lives both affected his jurisprudence and was a natural outgrowth of it. Justice Scalia expressed a skeptical, one might even say hostile, attitude towards psychology and its practitioners. Justice Scalia’s cynicism about the discipline and the therapists who practice it is particularly interesting regarding legal and policy arguments concerning children. His love of tradition and his rigid and unempathetic approach to children clash with modern notions of child psychology. Justice Scalia’s attitude towards psychology helps to explain his jurisprudence, …