Law Commons^™

Adopting Civil Damages: Wrongful Family Separation In Adoption, Malinda L. Seymore

Faculty Scholarship

The Trump Administration’s new immigration policy of family separation at the U.S./Mexico border rocked the summer of 2018. Yet family separation is the prerequisite to every legal adoption. The circumstances are different, of course. In legal adoption, the biological parents are provided with all the constitutional protections required in involuntary termination of parental rights, or they have voluntarily consented to family separation. But what happens when that family separation is wrongful, when the birth mother’s consent is not voluntary, or when the birth father’s wishes to parent are ignored? In theory, the child can be returned to the birth parents …

When Women Kill Newborns: The Rhetoric Of Vulnerability, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter explores feminist jurisprudence regarding women who commit acts of violence, focusing specifically on questions of agency in neonaticide (killing a newborn). A case study approach illustrates the debate in feminist theory between same-treatment and different-treatment of women as compared to men. While some feminist criminologists urge that women who kill must be viewed the same as men (as having agency and responsibility), other feminists question this approach and point out that women who commit crimes that intersect with family law receive disproportionately harsh treatment and should be treated differently than men.

This chapter contends that the paradox raised …