Law Commons^™

Aggravated Circumstances, Reasonable Efforts, And Asfa, Kathleen Bean

Kathleen Bean

This article seeks to identify circumstances that justify a state’s refusal to provide reasonable efforts to reunite parents with their abused or neglected children. While the article focuses on the “aggravated circumstances” exception to the federal reasonable efforts requirement, it offers an analytical approach useful to any decision-maker charged with protecting the health and safety of an abused or neglected child.

Since 1980, federal legislation has explicitly required states receiving federal foster care dollars to make reasonable efforts to reunite parents with children removed because of abuse or neglect. In 1997, Congress responded to widespread concerns that these efforts were …

Posthumously Conceived Children And Social Security Entitlements; Or Things (Not) To Do In Little Rock When You’Re Dead, Mel Cousins

Mel Cousins

This case note examines a number of recent decisions of the Arkansas state courts concerning the entitlements of posthumously conceived children under social security and workers compensation law. These decisions highlight the differences in approach which have been adopted in this important area and the difficulties caused by the lack of a uniform approach in federal law.

Towards An Equality-Enhancing Conception Of Privacy, Jane Bailey

Dalhousie Law Journal

Canadian jurisprudence has explicitly recognized the impact of child pornography on the privacy rights of the children abused in its production. In contrast, it has generally not analyzed other forms of harmful expression, such as hate propaganda and obscenity,to be violations of the privacy rights of those targeted. In a previous article, the author suggested that this distinction in the jurisprudence reflected the relative ease with which the privacy interests of the individual children whose abuse is documented inchild pornography meshed with the prevalent Western approach toprivacy as a negative individual liberty against intrusion. Noting the historic role that the …

Understanding The Dennis Ferguson Debate: Part 1, Jodie O'Leary

Jodie O'Leary

Extract:

The words 'Dob in this monster' appeared in large print on the front page of the Gold Coast Bulletin on 2 July 2008 following the release of Dennis Ferguson the previous day.¹ Many would say that these headlines and the sentiments expressed within such articles are representative of the community's outrage towards the legal inadequacies in Queensland of dealing with sex offenders. At the risk of offending the 'community' and being unpopular for advocating an alternative viewpoint, it appears that education about the law in this area is sorely needed. The purpose of this article is not to defend …

From Bad To Worse: Some Early Speculation About The Roberts Court And The Constitutional Fate Of The Poor, Andrew M. Siegel

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Non-Beneficial Pediatric Research And The Best Interest Standard: A Reconciliation, Paul J. Litton

Faculty Publications

Federal efforts beginning in the 1990's have successfully increased pediatric research to improve medical care for all children. Since 1997, the FDA has requested 800 pediatric studies involving 45,000 children. Much of this research is "non-beneficial"; that is, it exposes pediatric subjects to risk even though these children will not benefit from participating in the research. Non-beneficial pediatric research (NBPR) seems, by definition, contrary to the best interests of pediatric subjects, which is why one state supreme court has essentially prohibited it. It also appears that the only plausible rationale for this research is utilitarian, as it risks some children …

Book Review Of The Best Interests Of The Child In Healthcare, James G. Dwyer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Testing An Individual Systems Model Of Response Evaluation And Decision (Red) And Antisocial Behavior Across Adolescence, Reid Griffith Fontaine, Chongming Yang, Kenneth A. Dodge, John E. Bates, Gregory S. Pettit

Reid G. Fontaine

This study examined the bidirectional development of aggressive response evaluation and decision (RED) and antisocial behavior across five time-points in adolescence. Participants (n = 522) were asked to imagine themselves behaving aggressively while viewing videotaped ambiguous provocations, and answered a set of RED questions following each aggressive retaliation (administered at Grades 8 and 11 [13 and 16 years]). Self- and mother-reports of antisocial behavior were collected at Grades 7, 9/10, and 12 (12, 14/15, and 17 years). Using structural equation modeling, we found a partial mediating effect at each hypothesized mediational path, despite high stability of antisocial behavior across adolescence. …

Hernandez-Ortiz V. Gonzales: Creating Unsound Rules For Adjudicating Asylum Claims In The Ninth Circuit, Sarah A. Schroeder

Sarah A Schroeder

United States asylum law has developed out of several international agreements to which the United States is a party. More specifically, the United States has incorporated into its domestic legislation the asylum requirements set forth in the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (“Refugee Convention”) and the United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (“Refugee Protocol”). The Refugee Convention accords refugee status to people who adequately demonstrate that they have been or will be persecuted on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. However, over time new …

Protocol For Attorneys Representing Parents In Child Protective Proceedings, Frank E. Vandervort, Vivek S. Sankaran

Other Publications

This protocol is intended to guide attorneys through the strategic decisions they will need to make while representing parents in child protective cases. The protocol does not provide a comprehensive action-step checklist. Parents’ attorneys can find that kind of guidance in other resources, including the “How-To-Kit: Representing Parents in Child Protective Proceedings” by the Institute of Continuing Legal Education; “Guidelines for Achieving Permanency in Child Protection Proceedings” by Children’s Charter of the Courts of Michigan; and the American Bar Association’s “Standards of Practice for Attorneys Representing Parents in Abuse and Neglect Cases.”1 For its part, this protocol delves more substantively …

From Pedagogical Sociology To Constitutional Adjudication: The Meaning Of Desegregation In Social Science Research And Law, Anne Richardson Oakes

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In the United States following the case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) federal judges with responsibility for public school desegregation but no expertise in education or schools management appointed experts from the social sciences to act as court advisors. In Boston, MA, educational sociologists helped Judge W. Arthur Garrity design a plan with educational enhancement at its heart, but the educational outcomes were marginalized by a desegregation jurisprudence conceptualized in terms of race rather than education. This Article explores the frustration of outcomes in Boston by reference to the differing conceptualizations of desegregation in law and social science. …

In Defense Of The Indian Child Welfare Act In Aggravated Circumstances, C. Eric Davis

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) affords various protections to Indian families throughout child welfare proceedings. Among them is the duty imposed upon the state to provide rehabilitative services to families prior to the outplacement of an Indian child, or termination of parental rights. An analogous provision for non-Indians in the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) excuses rehabilitative services in "aggravated circumstances" of child abuse. The ICWA contains no such exception, and that absence has been controversial. In 2002, the Alaska Supreme Court applied ASFA's aggravated circumstances exception to the ICWA, thereby excusing services when a father severely abused …

The Lactating Angel Or Activist? Public Breatsfeeding As Symbolic Speech, Elizabeth Hildebrand Matherne

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The only way to combat this stigma against public breastfeeding is through the act of breastfeeding in public. The author proposes that breastfeeding is a powerful act of symbolic speech vital for discarding one of the lingering shackles of women's inequality that triggers first amendment protection. Breastfeeding in public addresses this stigma by treating two ills at once: 1) greater public exposure to the practice decreases the severity of society's reactions, and 2) the less stares and confrontation that publicly nursing mothers receive, the more likely they will be to breastfeed, whenever or wherever their baby is hungry. This will …

Myspace Is Also Their Space: Ideas For Keeping Children Safe From Sexual Predators On Social Networking Sites, Susan H. Duncan

Susan Duncan

A growing number of disturbing incidents involving minors as victims of sexual solicitation, assault and even murder have been traced to a fairly new type of Internet communication, social networking sites. These sites, hugely popular with teens, provide unique and largely independent and unsupervised channels of self expression and socialization for children. Yet the sites also present real dangers to today’s youth, the most serious being child victimization by sexual predators. To understand the magnitude of the issue this Article begins by defining what social networks are, explaining how they work and tracing their ever increasing popularity. Millions of users …

Steering Tax On Children’S Tobacco Consumption, Michael Adams

Michael Adams

Careers of smokers almost always start in infancy. Therefore, the tobacco industry is confronted with the economic necessity to turn children into addicted smokers. Present efforts to reduce the smoking rate of children remain without sufficient effect, because they miss to change this incentive. The solution is to tax cigarettes smoked by children. Adequately designed this steering tax causes the industry to prevent children from smoking instead of turning them into addicted smokers.

Water Leadership And The Rights Of Youth To Sustainable Development, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Reasonable and equitable use of water can help achieve local, regional, and international peace and security. This Article addresses water security around the world. Lack of safe drinking water and sanitation kills roughly 4500 children a day according to the World Health Organization. Youth have an important role to play as stakeholders with the longest range interests in policy outcomes. We have a shared responsibility to ensure water access and water quality. This Article concludes that clean technology transfer in particular and international cooperation generally can facilitate informed decisions upon which egalitarian agreements can establish sustainable watershed management.

Administrative And Punitive Isolation Of Children In Jails And Prisons: Cruel, Unusual, And Awaiting Condemnation, Ben Kleinman

Ben Kleinman-Green

This article applies our emerging understanding of how children mature into adults to the question of whether it is acceptable to subject children to isolation regimes in jails and prisons just as we do fully developed adults. I hope to shed light on the legal questions raised by the impact isolation has on the development of child inmates.

Children, Kin And Court: Designing Third Party Custody Policy To Protect Children, Third Parties And Parents, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Child Protection Pretense: States' Continued Consignment Of Newborn Babies To Unfit Parents, James G. Dwyer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Deference-Based Dilemma: The Implications Of Lewis V. Thompson For Access To Non-Emergency Health Benefits For Undocumented Alien Children, David J. Deterding

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Blurring Of The Lines: Children And Bans On Interracial Unions And Same-Sex Marriages, Carlos A. Ball

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Christianity And The Legal Status Of Abandoned Children In The Later Roman Empire, Joshua C. Tate

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Late Roman imperial legislation relating to abandoned or exposed children has been the subject of much debate. Some have argued that the constitutions of Constantine relating to abandoned children marked a new Christian influence, and that the years between Constantine and Justinian merely refined and explained Constantine's legislation. This paper argues that the legislation of Constantine was not distinctly Christian in content, but that some Christian influence can be seen in the rhetoric of imperial constitutions beginning in the fifth century, and that Christian ideas seem to have affected both the substance and the rhetoric of Justinian's legislation. The paper …

Forward: To Prevent And To Punish: An International Conference In Commemoration Of The Sixtieth Anniversary Of The Genocide Convention, Michael P. Scharf, Brianne M. Draffin

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Advocating For The Constitutional Rights Of Nonresident Fathers, Vivek Sankaran

Articles

Months after a child welaare case is petitioned, a nonresident father appears in court and requests custody of his children who are living in foster care. Little is known about the father, and immediately, the system-judge, caseworkers, and attorneys view him with suspicion and caution, inquiring about his whereabouts and his prior involvement in the children's lives. Those doubts, in turn, raise complicated questions about his legal rights to his children. As a practioner working in the child welfare system, you're likely to face this scenario. The largest percentage of child victims of abuse and neglect come from households headed …

Mothers, Babies And Jail, Rebecca Johnson

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

10 Years Out Of Step & Out Of Line: Florida’S Statutory Ban Of “Lesbi-Gay Adoption” Violates The Adoption And Safe Families Act Of 1997 (Asfa), Cynthia G. Hawkins-León, Anesha Worthy

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Legal Status And Effect On Children, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock

Journal Articles

One of the haunting claims of each poor, unmarried mother in Edin and Kefalas' Promises I Can Keep is that at least she can guarantee she will love her child, even though she cannot promise to make a lifelong commitment to a mate. That love, each young mother says, will be a sustaining gift both to her and the child. Similarly, in work done by sociologists McLanahan and Garfinkel to counteract the claim that it was not single parenting that made children's prospects dim, but poverty, sociologists have found that many of the bad effects of single parenting go away …

Non-Beneficial Pediatric Research And The Best Interest Standard: A Reconciliation, Paul J. Litton

Faculty Publications

Federal efforts beginning in the 1990's have successfully increased pediatric research to improve medical care for all children. Since 1997, the FDA has requested 800 pediatric studies involving 45,000 children. Much of this research is "non-beneficial"; that is, it exposes pediatric subjects to risk even though these children will not benefit from participating in the research. Non-beneficial pediatric research (NBPR) seems, by definition, contrary to the best interests of pediatric subjects, which is why one state supreme court has essentially prohibited it. It also appears that the only plausible rationale for this research is utilitarian, as it risks some children …

Children And Religious Expression In School: A Comparative Treatment Of The Veil And Other Religious Symbols In Western Democracies, Catherine J. Ross

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Whether and how to accommodate students' personal religious symbols worn in public schools are part of a mounting global debate. The competing claims of the body politic and the religious or cultural identity of minority groups came to a head in what the French called the "affair of the veil." This chapter examines the problem of the veil from a cross-cultural perspective, comparing the United States to several other western democracies. The comparison involves both legal and cultural premises. In each instance, the analysis must consider the fundamental values of the body politic, the laws and covenants that govern decision-making, …

Children's Beliefs And Family Law, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

In a recent series of opinions authored by Justice Stevens, the Court has recognized that children may have independent religious rights, and that these may be in conflict with their parents'. The questions for this piece are whether considering children's rights independently is a good thing whether it is warranted by children's actual religious preferences and whether children's religious activities actually do anything measurable for the children.

I do not advocate that the Supreme Court become more involved with family law than it has been since the substantive due process days of Meyer and Pierce. I am also not one …