Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
-
- University of Michigan Law School (65)
- Columbia Law School (21)
- University of Baltimore Law (9)
- University of Miami Law School (7)
- Selected Works (6)
-
- University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law (6)
- Fordham Law School (5)
- University of Richmond (5)
- Georgetown University Law Center (4)
- Duke Law (3)
- University of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School of Law (3)
- University of South Carolina (3)
- Emory University School of Law (2)
- Mitchell Hamline School of Law (2)
- St. John's University School of Law (2)
- University of Maine School of Law (2)
- University of Oklahoma College of Law (2)
- University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (2)
- University of Pittsburgh School of Law (2)
- Washington and Lee University School of Law (2)
- William & Mary Law School (2)
- Abilene Christian University (1)
- American University Washington College of Law (1)
- BLR (1)
- Florida A&M University College of Law (1)
- Golden Gate University School of Law (1)
- Hamline University (1)
- New York Law School (1)
- Notre Dame Law School (1)
- Pace University (1)
- Publication Year
- Publication
-
- Articles (37)
- Faculty Scholarship (29)
- University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform (15)
- Book Chapters (12)
- All Faculty Scholarship (11)
-
- Faculty Publications (8)
- Law Faculty Publications (5)
- Journal of Health Care Law and Policy (4)
- Michigan Law Review (4)
- Scholarly Works (4)
- Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works (3)
- Book Gallery (2)
- Emory Law Journal (2)
- Fordham Urban Law Journal (2)
- Leigh S. Goodmark (2)
- Michigan Journal of Gender & Law (2)
- Oklahoma Law Review (2)
- Other Publications (2)
- Washington and Lee Law Review (2)
- American Indian Law Journal (1)
- Books and Book Chapters (1)
- Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications (1)
- Courtney Barclay (1)
- Deseriee A. Kennedy (1)
- Electronic Theses and Dissertations (1)
- Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications (1)
- ExpressO (1)
- Faculty Scholarly Works (1)
- GGU Law Review Blog (1)
- Joshua A.T. Fairfield (1)
- Publication Type
- File Type
Articles 1 - 30 of 174
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Real Wrongs Of Icwa, James G. Dwyer
The Real Wrongs Of Icwa, James G. Dwyer
Faculty Publications
Haaland v. Brackeen rejected federalism-based challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) but signaled receptivity to future challenges based on individual rights. The adult-focused rights claims presented in Haaland, however, miss the mark of what is truly problematic about ICWA. This Article presents an in-depth, children’s-rights based critique of the Act, explaining how it violates a fundamental right against state exertion of power over central aspects of persons’ private lives to their detriment for illicit purposes. In fact, the Act’s defenders are complicit in the same sort of government violence that motivated ICWA’s enactment—erasing aspects of children’s heritage …
The Harm Of "Nothing Burgers", Joshua Gupta-Kagan
The Harm Of "Nothing Burgers", Joshua Gupta-Kagan
Faculty Scholarship
Child protective services (CPS) agencies subject a wide scope of families to investigation, and the vast majority do not lead to family separations or family court cases. A 2017 study, for instance, showing that 37% of all children and 53% of Black children are the subject of CPS investigations in their childhoods, has now been cited hundreds of times. Kelley Fong’s new book, Investigating Families, is based on the months she spent embedded with CPS investigators responding to allegations that parents abused or (more often) neglected their children, and the interviews she conducted with both investigators and the parents …
Fast Track To The Civil Death Penalty: Involuntary Termination Of Parental Rights And An Analysis Of The Minnesota Supreme Court's Decision In R.D.L., Ryan E. Boevers
Fast Track To The Civil Death Penalty: Involuntary Termination Of Parental Rights And An Analysis Of The Minnesota Supreme Court's Decision In R.D.L., Ryan E. Boevers
Mitchell Hamline Law Review
No abstract provided.
Nudging Improvements To The Family Regulation System, Joshua Gupta-Kagan
Nudging Improvements To The Family Regulation System, Joshua Gupta-Kagan
Faculty Scholarship
The Restatement of Children and the Law features a strong endorsement of parents’ rights to the care, custody, and control of their children because parents’ rights are generally good for children. Building on that foundation, the Restatement’s sections on child neglect and abuse law would resolve several jurisdictional splits in favor of greater protections for family integrity, thus protecting more families against the harms that come from state intervention, especially state separation of parents from children.
But a close read of the Restatement shows that it only goes so far. It is not likely to significantly reduce the wide variation …
Case Law On American Indians: October 2022 - August 2023, Thomas P. Schlosser
Case Law On American Indians: October 2022 - August 2023, Thomas P. Schlosser
American Indian Law Journal
No abstract provided.
Crossing Over: A Description Of Dual Status Youth In Taylor County, Texas, Kimberly S. Putnam
Crossing Over: A Description Of Dual Status Youth In Taylor County, Texas, Kimberly S. Putnam
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This study explores and describes the experiences of ten dual status youth in Taylor County, Texas by examining the factors of race, sex, child welfare allegation, and juvenile justice offense. A review of the literature suggests that this population has unique challenges in and outside the courtroom, including being at increased risk for disparate outcomes in later adolescence and adulthood. This study compared single-system child welfare and juvenile justice data from Texas DFPS Region 2 and Taylor County to raw data provided on a sample of ten dual status youth identified in Taylor County from 2017–2021. Findings included a disproportionately …
A Child’S Constitutional Right To Family Integrity And Counsel In Dependency Proceedings, Rachel Kennedy
A Child’S Constitutional Right To Family Integrity And Counsel In Dependency Proceedings, Rachel Kennedy
Emory Law Journal
Since the child welfare system’s inception, abuse and neglect laws have conflated poverty-related neglect with active parental violence and willful neglect. The ensuing state surveillance has disproportionately harmed poor children and children of color. Pursuant to the state’s expansive parens patriae authority, countless families are investigated, and thousands of children are separated from their caretakers each year—only to be returned within days or weeks after a finding that the reasons for removal were unsubstantiated. Other children risk drifting in foster care limbo until they experience the termination of parental rights—an adjudication so severe that some courts call it the “civil …
Parens Patriae After The Pandemic, Meredith Johnson Harbach
Parens Patriae After The Pandemic, Meredith Johnson Harbach
Law Faculty Publications
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted extraordinary state action to protect American children. Acting in its longstanding role as parens patriae, the state stepped in to protect children and their families from the ravages of the pandemic as well as from the dramatic upheaval it precipitated. This Article will evaluate the state’s pandemic response vis-à-vis children and their families, mining the experience for lessons learned and possible ways forward. Specifically, this project will argue that the state’s pandemic response represented a departure from the state’s conventional approach to parens patriae. Conventional practice prior to the pandemic was characterized by a state model …
Sacred Children, Taboo Tradeoffs, And Distorted Discourses, Sean Hannon Williams
Sacred Children, Taboo Tradeoffs, And Distorted Discourses, Sean Hannon Williams
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Article brings together three literatures—bioethics, psychological research on taboo tradeoffs, and family law—to reveal pervasive distortions in current family law scholarship and judicial reasoning. Empirical work in bioethics shows that child welfare occupies a unique moral sphere. People routinely resist making tradeoffs between spheres. Just as sacrificing adult lives for money is taboo, so too is sacrificing child welfare for adult welfare. When faced with the prospect of these tradeoffs, people engage in a predictable set of avoidance and moral mitigation strategies. Across five case studies, this Article shows how child welfare has talismanic qualities which, even in the …
Smith's Last Stand? Free Exercise And Foster Care Exceptionalism, James G. Dwyer
Smith's Last Stand? Free Exercise And Foster Care Exceptionalism, James G. Dwyer
Faculty Publications
Part I first situates Fulton [Fulton v. City of Philadelphia] within two broader contexts—the clash between social equality rights for sexual minorities and religious freedom, and a pattern of eliding children from legal contests over their lives. It then explains why the standard constitutional framing of social equality versus religious freedom contests is improper when the state is acting as guardian and proxy for children or other non-autonomous persons. Part II sets out a proper framework for analyzing these conflicts, elucidating the scope and nature of the state’s parens patriae authority—a lacuna in constitutional jurisprudence. Part III applies …
Did Anyone Ask The Child?: Recognizing Foster Children’S Rights To Make Mature Decisions Through Child-Centered Representation, Katie Chilton
Did Anyone Ask The Child?: Recognizing Foster Children’S Rights To Make Mature Decisions Through Child-Centered Representation, Katie Chilton
Emory Law Journal
A child placed in foster care finds themselves in an especially vulnerable position. Removed from their homes, apart from family, and living with strangers, a foster child’s voice often gets lost in the shuffle. While the Supreme Court has recognized some constitutional rights for children, legislators and judges tread lightly when expanding children’s rights for fear of infringing upon parents’ fundamental rights to determine the care and upbringing of their children. This situation creates a unique disadvantage for a child in foster care who is subject to the trauma of removal, placement in a temporary home of strangers, outside the …
The Restatement Of The Law, Children And The Law: A Blueprint For Reforming The Child Welfare System, Clare Huntington
The Restatement Of The Law, Children And The Law: A Blueprint For Reforming The Child Welfare System, Clare Huntington
Faculty Scholarship
As part of the special issue on the foster care system, this essay challenges the assumption that all the children who are in foster care should be in foster care. The essay first describes the familiar—and still persuasive—argument that foster care does not serve the interests of most children and families. It then brings a new lens to bear on this argument by describing the work of the American Law Institute's Restatement of the Law, Children and the Law, which provides a blueprint for shrinking the child welfare system and promoting child well-being.
Keynote: How I Became A Family Policing Abolitionist, Dorothy E. Roberts
Keynote: How I Became A Family Policing Abolitionist, Dorothy E. Roberts
All Faculty Scholarship
This piece is a written version of Professor Dorothy Roberts' keynote speech at the Columbia Journal of Race and Law's 11th annual symposium, titled Strengthened Bonds: Abolishing the Child Welfare System and Re-Envisioning Child Well-Being.
Kinship Care In Pennsylvania: Creating An Equitable System For Families, Heidi Redlich Epstein, Lucy Johnston-Walsh, Jennifer Pokempner, Kathleen Creamer, Karissa Phelps
Kinship Care In Pennsylvania: Creating An Equitable System For Families, Heidi Redlich Epstein, Lucy Johnston-Walsh, Jennifer Pokempner, Kathleen Creamer, Karissa Phelps
Faculty Scholarly Works
Family connection provides one of the most important contributions to the development and identity of children. A child’s family connections help them grow and thrive, provide them identity and security, and are a critical link to culture and traditions.
When experiencing difficult times, family members can support each other in ways no one else can, with the shared goal of keeping the family intact and connected.
When a child’s life is disrupted, calling on the support of family is custom in most communities and can be a great source of comfort for both children and the family. This is especially …
Strengthened Bonds: Abolishing The Child Welfare System And Re-Envisioning Child Well-Being, Nancy D. Polikoff, Jane M. Spinak
Strengthened Bonds: Abolishing The Child Welfare System And Re-Envisioning Child Well-Being, Nancy D. Polikoff, Jane M. Spinak
Faculty Scholarship
The 2001 book, Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare, by Dorothy Roberts, called out the racism of the child welfare system and the harms that system perpetrates on families and communities. Twenty years later, despite numerous reform efforts, the racism and profound harms endure. It is time for transformative change. In this foreword to the symposium Strengthened Bonds: Abolishing the Child Welfare System and Re-Envisioning Child Well-Being, honoring the 20th anniversary of Shattered Bonds, we highlight Professor Roberts’ articulation of her development as a family policing abolitionist and summarize the articles and comments contributed from scholars …
Compassion: The Necessary Foundation To Reunify Families Involved In The Foster Care System, Katherine Markey, Vivek Sankaran
Compassion: The Necessary Foundation To Reunify Families Involved In The Foster Care System, Katherine Markey, Vivek Sankaran
Articles
Compassion plays a critical role in ensuring that stakeholders can engage with, and support parents trying to reunify with kids in the foster care system. This Article will explore the compassion crisis in foster care, will present the research documenting the impact of compassion on engaging families, and will identify key steps stakeholders can take to incorporate compassion into their work.
Children In Foster Care: The Odds Are Against Them, Shawna Doughman
Children In Foster Care: The Odds Are Against Them, Shawna Doughman
GGU Law Review Blog
Most child welfare reports that lead to removal of children from their homes are filed for neglect rather than abuse. Often, their parents want to take care of them, but are failing for one reason, or for many. Nonetheless, the lion’s share of the $30 billion annual budget of state and federal child welfare funding goes overwhelmingly to foster care and adoption services which remove the children from their parents, instead of to helping those families care for their own children.
THE S
Conceptualizing Legal Childhood In The Twenty-First Century, Clare Huntington, Elizabeth S. Scott
Conceptualizing Legal Childhood In The Twenty-First Century, Clare Huntington, Elizabeth S. Scott
Michigan Law Review
The law governing children is complex, sometimes appearing almost incoherent. The relatively simple framework established in the Progressive Era, in which parents had primary authority over children, subject to limited state oversight, has broken down over the past few decades. Lawmakers started granting children some adult rights and privileges, raising questions about their traditional status as vulnerable, dependent, and legally incompetent beings. As children emerged as legal persons, children’s rights advocates challenged the rationale for parental authority, contending that robust parental rights often harm children. And a wave of punitive reforms in response to juvenile crime in the 1990s undermined …
Rethinking Foster Care: Why Our Current Approach To Child Welfare Has Failed, Vivek Sankaran, Christopher Church
Rethinking Foster Care: Why Our Current Approach To Child Welfare Has Failed, Vivek Sankaran, Christopher Church
Articles
Over the past decade, the child welfare system has expanded, with vast public and private resources being spent on the system. Despite this investment, there is scant evidence suggesting a meaningful return on investment. This Article argues that without a change in the values held by the system, increased funding will not address the public health problems of child abuse and neglect.
America's Hidden Foster Care System, Joshua Gupta-Kagan
America's Hidden Foster Care System, Joshua Gupta-Kagan
Faculty Scholarship
In most states, child protection agencies induce parents to transfer physical custody of their children to kinship caregivers by threatening to place the children in foster care and bring them to family court. Both the frequency of these actions (this Article establishes that they occur tens or even hundreds of thousands of times annually) and their impact (they separate parents and children, sometimes permanently) resemble the formal foster care system. But they are hidden from courts, because agencies file no petition alleging abuse or neglect, and hidden from policymakers, because agencies do not generally report these cases.
While informal custody …
Child Welfare And Covid-19: An Unexpected Opportunity For Systemic Change, Jane M. Spinak
Child Welfare And Covid-19: An Unexpected Opportunity For Systemic Change, Jane M. Spinak
Faculty Scholarship
The COVID-19 pandemic has already wrecked greater havoc in poor neighborhoods of color, where pre-existing conditions exacerbate the disease’s spread. Crowded housing and homelessness, less access to health care and insurance, and underlying health conditions are all factors that worsen the chances of remaining healthy.Workers desperate for income continue to work without sufficient protective measures, moving in and out of these neighborhoods, putting themselves and their families at risk. During periods of greater disruption, tensions are heightened and violence more prevalent. Already some experts are warning of an onslaught of child maltreatment cases, citing earlier examples of spikes in foster …
Conceptualizing Legal Childhood In The Twenty-First Century, Clare Huntington, Elizabeth S. Scott
Conceptualizing Legal Childhood In The Twenty-First Century, Clare Huntington, Elizabeth S. Scott
Faculty Scholarship
The law governing children is complex, sometimes appearing almost incoherent. The relatively simple framework established in the Progressive Era, in which parents had primary authority over children, subject to limited state oversight, has broken down over the past few decades. Lawmakers started granting children some adult rights and privileges, raising questions about their traditional status as vulnerable, dependent, and legally incompetent beings. As children emerged as legal persons, children’s rights advocates challenged the rationale for parental authority, contending that robust parental rights often harm children. And a wave of punitive reforms in response to juvenile crime in the 1990s undermined …
A Cure Worse Than The Disease? The Impact Of Removal On Children And Their Families, Vivek Sankaran, Christopher Church, Monique Mitchell
A Cure Worse Than The Disease? The Impact Of Removal On Children And Their Families, Vivek Sankaran, Christopher Church, Monique Mitchell
Articles
Removing children from their parents is child welfare's most drastic intervention. Research clearly establishes the profound and irreparable damage family separation can inflict on children and their parents. To ensure that this intervention is only used when necessary, a complex web of state and federal constitutional principles, statutes, administrative regulations, judicial decisions, and agency policies govern the removal decision. Central to these authorities is the presumption that a healthy and robust child welfare system keeps families together, protects children from harm, and centers on the needs of children and their parents. Yet, research and practice-supported by administrative data-paint a different …
The Harm Of Child Removal, Shanta Trivedi
The Harm Of Child Removal, Shanta Trivedi
All Faculty Scholarship
When the state proves or even merely alleges that a parent has abused or neglected a child, family courts may remove the child from the parent’s care. However, research shows separating a child from her parent(s) has detrimental, long-term emotional and psychological consequences that may be worse than leaving the child at home. This is due to the trauma of removal itself, as well as the unstable nature of, and high rates of abuse in, foster care. Nevertheless, the child welfare system errs on the side of removal and almost uniformly fails to consider the harms associated with that removal. …
Punishing Families For Being Poor: How Child Protection Interventions Threaten The Right To Parent While Impoverished, David Pimentel
Punishing Families For Being Poor: How Child Protection Interventions Threaten The Right To Parent While Impoverished, David Pimentel
Articles
No abstract provided.
Keeping It In The Family: Minor Guardianship As Private Child Protection, Deirdre Smith
Keeping It In The Family: Minor Guardianship As Private Child Protection, Deirdre Smith
Faculty Publications
Due to the opioid use epidemic and an overwhelmed public child protection system, minor guardianship is an increasingly important tool for relative caregivers seeking to obtain legal authority regarding the children who come into their care because of a parent’s crisis. Yet minor guardianship originated in colonial law for an entirely different purpose: to protect legal orphans who had inherited property. Today’s guardianship laws are still based on this “orphan model” which does not fit today’s reality. This Article is the first to analyze how these outdated guardianship laws are being used as a form of “private child protection” and …
Religious Issues In Child Welfare Cases, Rebecca Stahl
Religious Issues In Child Welfare Cases, Rebecca Stahl
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
My Name Is Not 'Respondent Mother': The Need For Procedural Justice In Child Welfare Cases, Vivek S. Sankaran
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 Empirical Turn In Family Law, Clare Huntington
The Empirical Turn In Family Law, Clare Huntington
Faculty Scholarship
Historically, the legal system justified family law’s rules and policies through morality, common sense, and prevailing cultural norms. In a sharp departure, and consistent with a broader trend across the legal system, empirical evidence increasingly dominates the regulation of families.
There is much to celebrate in this empirical turn. Properly used, empirical evidence in family law can help the state act more effectively and efficiently, unmask prejudice, and depoliticize contentious battles. But the empirical turn also presents substantial concerns. Beyond perennial issues of the quality of empirical evidence and the ability of legal actors to use it, there are more …
Moving Beyond Lassiter: The Need For A Federal Statutory Right To Counsel For Parents In Child Welfare Cases, Vivek S. Sankaran
Moving Beyond Lassiter: The Need For A Federal Statutory Right To Counsel For Parents In Child Welfare Cases, Vivek S. Sankaran
Articles
In New York City, an indigent parent can receive the assistance of a multidisciplinary legal team—an attorney, a social worker, and a parent advocate—to defend against the City’s request to temporarily remove a child from her care. But in Mississippi, that same parent can have her rights to her child permanently terminated without ever receiving the assistance of a single lawyer. In Washington State, the Legislature has ensured that parents ensnared in child abuse and neglect proceedings will receive the help of a well-trained and well-compensated attorney with a reasonable caseload. Yet in Tennessee, its Supreme Court has held that …