Juvenile Law Commons^™

My Name Is Not 'Respondent Mother': The Need For Procedural Justice In Child Welfare Cases, Vivek S. Sankaran

Articles

You are a parent whose children are in foster care. Your court hearing is today, after which you hope your children will return home. Upon leaving the bus, you wait in line to enter the court. At the metal detectors you’re told you can’t bring your cell phone inside. With no storage options, you hide your phone in the bushes, hoping it will be there when you return.

The Productivity Of Wh- Prompts In Child Forensic Interviews, Elizabeth C, Ahern, Samantha J. Andrews, Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Thomas D. Lyon

University of Southern California Legal Studies Working Paper Series

Child witnesses are often asked wh- prompts (what, how, why, who, when, where) in forensic interviews. However, little research has examined the ways in which children respond to different wh- prompts and no previous research has investigated productivity differences among wh- prompts in investigative interviews. This study examined the use and productivity of wh- prompts in 95 transcripts of 4- to 13-year-olds alleging sexual abuse in child investigative interviews. What-how questions about actions elicited the most productive responses during both the rapport building and substantive phases. Future research and practitioner training should consider distinguishing among different wh- prompts.

Bait Questions As Source Of Misinformation In Police Interviews: Does Race Or Age Of The Suspect Increase Jurors' Memory Errors?, Matilde Ascheri

Student Theses

Bait questions—hypothetical questions about evidence, often used by detectives during interrogations—can activate the misinformation effect and alter jurors’ perceptions of the evidence of a case. Here, we were interested in investigating whether mock jurors’ implicit biases could amplify the magnitude of the misinformation effect. We accomplished this by manipulating the age and race of the suspect being interrogated. As an extension of Luke et al. (2017), we had participants read a police report describing evidence found at a crime scene, then read a transcript of a police interrogation where the detective used bait questions to introduce new evidence ...

Ethics Issues Inherent In Special Immigrant Juvenile State Court Proceedings - Practical Proposals For Intractable Problems, Alexis Anderson

Alexis Anderson

Immigration advocates have long noted how ethical challenges pervade certain areas of their practice, particularly in the employment and spousal contexts. A significant body of literature exists that attempts to identify clear, professional norms for grappling successfully with thorny ethical questions inherent in those areas. This article expands that scholarship by studying the ethics issues that arise for counsel representing youth seeking Special Immigrant Juvenile ("SIJ") status in state court. Using SIJ case studies to explore questions of confidentiality, conflicts, and candor, this article uncovers key factors that complicate practitioners' ability to comply with existing ethical mandates. One defining feature ...

Children's Conversational Memory Regarding A Minor Transgression And A Subsequent Interview, Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Kelly Mcwilliams, Thomas D. Lyon

University of Southern California Legal Studies Working Paper Series

Children’s memories for their conversations are commonly explored in child abuse cases. In two studies, we examined conversational recall in 154 4- to 9-year-old children’s reports of an interaction with a stranger, some of whom were complicit in a transgression and were admonished to keep it a secret. Immediately afterwards, all children were interviewed about their interaction. One week later, children were asked recall questions about their interaction with the stranger, their conversations with the stranger, and their conversations with the interviewer. Overall, interaction recall questions elicited few details about children’s conversations, whereas conversation recall questions were ...

Unregulated Custody Transfers: Why The Practice Of Rehoming Should Be Considered A Form Of Illegal Adoption And Human Trafficking, Michael D. Aune

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Syrian Crisis: Violations Of Basic Human Rights And Particularly Children's Rights, Ranee K.L. Panjabi

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The School To Deportation Pipeline, Laila L. Hlass

Georgia State University Law Review

The United States immigration regime has a long and sordid history of explicit racism, including limiting citizenship to free whites, excluding Chinese immigrants, deporting massive numbers of Mexican immigrants and U.S. citizens of Mexican ancestry, and implementing a national quotas system preferencing Western Europeans. More subtle bias has seeped into the system through the convergence of the criminal and immigration law regimes.

Immigration enforcement has seen a rise in mass immigrant detention and deportation, bolstered by provocative language casting immigrants as undeserving undesirables: criminals, gang members, and terrorists. Immigrant children, particularly black and Latino boys, are increasingly finding themselves ...

Big Brother Is Watching: When Should Georgia Get Involved In Issues Of Family Privacy To Protect Children’S Liberties?, Michelle Wilco

Georgia State University Law Review

Alecia Faith Pennington (Faith) did not officially exist until she was nineteen. Faith’s conservative, religious parents, Lisa and James, raised their nine children on the family farm just outside Kerrville, Texas, and kept their family as self-sufficient and separate from the rest of the world as possible.

The family was very insular; the parents home schooled all of the children, and the family rarely left their home, with the rare exception of going to church. Lisa and James also prohibited their children from using the Internet until they were eighteen, at which point they were only allowed limited access ...

Trapped In The Shackles Of America's Criminal Justice System, Shristi Devu

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming

Top-Down Or From The Ground?: A Practical Perspective On Reforming The Field Of Children And The Law, Cheryl Bratt

Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

Children get a raw deal in this country at the federal, state, and family levels. The law indisputably treats children in many limiting and paternalistic ways, typically designating them as objects to be controlled either by their parents or the government—two parties perpetually duking it out for authority. In their article, The New Law of the Child, 127 Yale L. J. 1448 (2018), Anne C. Dailey and Laura A. Rosenbury envision overhauling constitutional law to better promote children’s broader interests. Theirs is thus a top-down approach to change: by extending the Constitution to safeguard more robust rights for ...

A Case For Revisiting The Child Welfare Act, Hannah Dudley

Boston College Law Review

In 2017, in D.O. v. Glisson, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the Child Welfare Act of 1980 (the “Act”) creates a privately enforceable right to foster care maintenance payments and that this right could be enforced by an individual through the use of § 1983. In a similar case, Midwest Foster Care and Adoption Ass’n v. Kincade, the Eighth Circuit held that the Act does not create a privately enforceable right and thus, could not be enforced through the use of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. This Comment argues that the ...

Home Sweet Home? Determining Habitual Residence Within The Meaning Of The Hague Convention, Morgan Mcdonald

Boston College Law Review

In becoming a signatory to The Hague Convention on International Child Abduction, the United States agreed to expeditiously return all internationally abducted children to the country of their habitual residence, such that that nation may determine the merits of any underlying custody disputes. The Convention failed, however, to instruct American courts as to how to determine a child’s habitual residence. This has resulted in a split among circuits as to whether habitual residence should be determined using objective evidence of the child’s perspective, subjective evidence of parental intent, or some combination. In 2017, the Eighth Circuit held in ...

Reyes V. Lewis: A Missed Opportunity For Minors And Miranda, Jessica Bennett

Golden Gate University Law Review

The controversial debate—whether minors understand the complexity of Miranda rights—has prevented lawmakers from producing laws that assist minors in comprehending these warnings. As a protected class, minors should be provided with extra counseling if they are faced with criminal charges in order to save judicial resources and help keep innocent minors out of the criminal justice system. A law mandating that minors consult with a pro tem attorney prior to questioning could reduce the number of cases awaiting adjudication, relieve the court of having to investigate whether the minor was coerced, threatened, intimidated, tricked, or falsely promised, and ...

The Effects Of Implicit Encouragement And The Putative Confession On Children's Memory Reports, Kyndra C. Cleveland, J A. Quas, Thomas D. Lyon

University of Southern California Legal Studies Working Paper Series

The current study tested the effects of two interview techniques on children's report productivity and accuracy following exposure to suggestion: implicit encouragement (backchanneling, use of children's names) and the putative confession (telling children that a suspect "told me everything that happened and wants you to tell the truth"). One hundred and forty-three, 3-8-year-old children participated in a classroom event. One week later, they took part in a highly suggestive conversation about the event and then a mock forensic interview in which the two techniques were experimentally manipulated. Greater use of implicit encouragement led to increases, with age, in ...

Reimagining The Scope Of Children’S Legal Protection During Armed Conflicts Under International Humanitarian Law And International Criminal Law, Anaise Muzima

Western Journal of Legal Studies

This paper calls for a clarification of the law and a re-evaluation of the status of children who are participating in hostilities by highlighting that any fruitful debate on child soldiers needs to go beyond the binary and limited discussion on whether such children are merely victims or perpetrators. The author focuses on the principles defined by International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law as to the distinction between “direct” and “active” participation to hostilities and argues that such distinction is ambiguous and inapplicable to the specific context of child soldiering. This paper concludes by emphasizing the necessity to reimagine ...

The Elimination Of Child “Custody” Litigation: Using Business Branding Techniques To Transform Social Behavior, Elena B. Langan

Elena B. Langan

This article discusses how rebranding principles, already being used to alter social behavior in other non-consumer contexts, could be utilized to accomplish the legislative goal to reduce litigation as well as diminish animosity in custody cases. Part II of this article discusses the impetus for a transformation in the way parents view custody disputes. Part III discusses basic branding principles and how companies establish a brand and can successfully change their branding. Part IV explores the evolution of the current custody brand, identifies eight states that have eliminated “custody” and, in some cases, “visitation” from their vernacular, and discusses, in ...

There Is No Such Thing As A Child Prostitute: Why Decriminalization Is Only The First Step In California, Edrina Nazaradeh

Pepperdine Law Review

Prostituted minors are victims of the deceitful schemes of pimps, traffickers, and Johns. While there is widespread agreement that these minors are victims, states have taken different approaches to addressing this heinous crime. Generally, states either prosecute prostituted minors or adopt Safe Harbor laws that grant prostituted minors immunity from prosecution. California joined the majority of states when it passed Senate Bill 1322. Effective January 1, 2017, this bill amended California’s Penal Code to grant children under eighteen years of age immunity from prosecution for prostitution. This Comment argues that Senate Bill 1322 properly amended California law by aligning ...

Ask Versus Tell: Potential Confusion When Child Witnesses Are Questioned About Conversastions, Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Kelly Mcwilliams, Thomas D. Lyon

University of Southern California Legal Studies Working Paper Series

Children’s potential confusion between “ask” and “tell” can lead to misunderstandings when child witnesses are asked to report prior conversations. The verbs distinguish both between interrogating and informing and between requesting and commanding. Children’s understanding was examined using both field (i.e., Study 1) and laboratory (i.e., Studies 2-4) methods. Study 1 examined 100 5- to 12-year-olds’ trial testimony in child sexual abuse cases, and found that potentially ambiguous use of ask and tell was common, typically found in yes/no questions that elicited unelaborated answers, and virtually never clarified by attorneys or child witnesses. Studies 2-4 ...

Hb 359 - Power Of Attorney, Roma A. Amin, Catherine V. Schutz

Georgia State University Law Review

The bill would have repealed and replaced Georgia’s Power of Attorney for the Care of a Minor Child Act. The category of people who could be given power of attorney for the care of a minor child would have expanded from only grandparents and great-grandparents to a broad category of the child’s relatives, and anyone associated with a non-profit organization focused on child or family services or a licensed child-placing agency.