Law Commons^™

The Connection Between Permanency And Education In Child Welfare Policy, Kele Stewart

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Internationalization Of American Family Law, Barbara Stark

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Even fifty years ago, the United States was a superpower and Americans traveled for pleasure and worked abroad. Then, like now, the United States was a magnet for immigrants seeking freedom, or asylum, or opportunity. Then, like now, human relationships crossed geographical and political boundaries, challenging the limits of family law.

But globalization and the vast migrations of capital and labor that have accompanied it in recent decades have transformed family law in once unimaginable ways. Families have been torn apart and new families have been created. Borders have become more porous, allowing adoptees and mail order brides to join …

Balancing The Adoptive Triangle: The Need To Protect Biological Parents’ Privacy Rights, Adrienne Fleming

Student Works

No abstract provided.

The Future Impact Of Same-Sex Marriage: More Questions Than Answers, Nan D. Hunter

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Same-sex relationships have already significantly altered family law, by leading to new formal relationship statuses and incorporation of the principle that both of a child’s legal parents can be of the same sex. This essay explores further changes that may lie ahead as same-sex marriage debates increasingly affect both family law and the social meanings of marriage. Marriage as an institution has changed most dramatically because of the cumulative effects of the last half-century of de-gendering family law. Same-sex marriage–and perhaps even more so, the highly visible cultural debate over it–is contributing to this process.

The author argues that the …

Changing The Narrative Of Child Welfare, Matthew I. Fraidin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In child welfare, the difference we can make as lawyers for parents, children, and the state, and as judges, is to prevent children from entering foster care unnecessarily. And we can end a child’s stay in foster care as quickly as possible. To do that, we have to fight against a powerful narrative of child welfare and against the accepted “top-down” paradigm of legal services.

In this essay, Professor Fraidin suggests that we can achieve our goals of limiting entries to foster care and speeding exits from it by looking for the strengths of the people involved in our cases, …

Who Owns The Soul Of The Child?: An Essay On Religious Parenting Rights And The Enfranchisement Of The Child, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

At common law, and (for most of the nation's history) under state statutory regimes, the authority of the parent to direct the child's upbringing was a matter of duty, not right, and chief among parental obligations was the duty to provide the child with a suitable education. It has long been a legal commonplace that at common law the parent had a "sacred right" to the custody of his or her child, that the parent's right to control the upbringing of the child was almost absolute. But this reading of the law is sorely anachronistic, less history than advocacy on …

Child Representation In America: Progress Report From The National Quality Improvement Center, Donald N. Duquette, Julian Darwall

Articles

Few dispute that children in the child welfare system need effective representation. In October 2009, the U.S. Children's Bureau named the University of Michigan Law School the National Quality Improvement Center on the Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System (QIC-ChildRep). The QIC-ChildRep is a five-year, multimillion dollar project, charged with gathering, developing, and communicating knowledge on child representation. In addition, the QIC-ChildRep is tasked with promoting a consensus on the role of the child's legal representative and providing one of the first random assignment experimental design research projects on the legal representation of children.

Representing Parents With Severe Mental Illness In Child Welfare Cases, Joshua B. Kay

Articles

Parents with severe mental illness are at greater risk than others of becoming involved in the child protection system, and their cases are more likely than others to result in termination of parental rights. Among women with severe mental illness, 26-75% lose custody to one or more of their children, rates far higher than for women without mental illness. Lawyers who represent mentally ill parents in child protection matters face a number of challenges, including maintaining a productive attorney-client relationship, advocating for appropriate services and reasonable accommodations for their clients’ disabilities, and refuting assumptions about their clients’ parenting abilities that …

Psychological Evaluation Of Parenting Capacity In Child Welfare Proceedings, Katherine L. Rosenblum, Joshua B. Kay

Articles

In the child welfare context, courts, attorneys, and child protection agencies often turn to psychologists to evaluate parenting capacity. As evaluators in child protection cases, psychologists may be asked to evaluate different parties for different purposes, acting as agents of the court, the child protection agency, or directly retained by the parents or the lawyer guardian ad litem. In this article we focus specifically on psychological evaluations addressing issues pertaining to parenting capacity (in contrast to, for example, assessments that focus solely on child psychological well-being or developmental status). These types of assessments may help to inform dispositional decisions, including …

Building Resilience In Foster Children: The Role Of The Child's Advocate, Frank E. Vandervort, James Henry, Mark A. Sloane

Articles

This Article provides an introduction to, and brief overview of trauma, its impact upon foster children, and steps children's advocates" can take to lessen or ameliorate the impact of trauma upon their clients. This Article begins in Part 11 by defining relevant terms. Part III addresses the prevalence of trauma among children entering the child welfare system. Part IV considers the neurodevelopmental (i.e., the developing brain) impact of trauma on children and will explore how that trauma may manifest emotionally and behaviorally. With this foundation in place, Part V discusses the need for a comprehensive trauma assessment including a thorough …

Integrating Humanities Into Family Law And The Problem With Truths Universally Acknowledged, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

Family Law differs from the other subjects under discussion today in at least two respects. As a matter of curricular location, it is not always considered a core course. I am therefore grateful for Melissa Murray’s public recognition of the “coreness” of Family Law within a legal education. Second, if one purpose of integrating humanities into the core curriculum is to humanize the law, it is probably safe to say that Family Law is already humanized enough. The subject comes fully loaded with all too human conflict and suffering: cruelty, anger, sex, disappointed expectations, and all of these play out …

Of Wife And The Domestic Servant In The Arab World, Lama Abu-Odeh

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The author asserts to avoid common misunderstandings on the relevance of Sharia to modern women in the Arab World that a) Shari’s relevance to the lives of modern women in the Arab World has been largely confined to the area of family law, b) in the modern nation state Sharia has been codified, i.e., certain rules derived from Islamic jurisprudence on the family have been selected and passed as laws, each nation state having its own unique combination of such rules, c) the courts and the judges who adjudicate disputes on family law are either secular courts/judges, or judges trained …

Adolescents In Society: Their Evolving Legal Status, Introduction, Cynthia Godsoe

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Not The Marrying Kind: A Feminist Critique Of Same-Sex Marriage/Reconstructing Marriage: The Legal Status Of Relationships In A Changing Society (Book Review), Yuvraj Joshi

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Just Intervention: Differential Response In Child Protection, Cynthia Godsoe

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Why Marriage?, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

In a well-known New Yorker cartoon, a man and a woman sit together on a couch, clearly in the midst of a conversation about marriage for gay and lesbian couples. “Haven't they suffered enough?” one of them asks. Although the cartoon characters jest, the question of why gay people are fighting so hard for the right to marry is a serious one. After all, marriage rates have been dropping steadily in the United States and in much of the world, and divorce rates remain high. Why, then, are lesbians and gay men fighting so hard to join an institution that …

Service And Positions Held, Andrew Coats

Andrew M. Coats

No abstract provided.

Member, Board Of Directors, Francine Sherman

Francine T. Sherman

No abstract provided.

Board President, Artistic Noise, Inc. (2009-Present), Francine Sherman

Francine T. Sherman

No abstract provided.

Of Cheerios And Sequined Heels: A Response To Darren Rosenblum's "Unsex Mothering: Toward A Culture Of New Parenting", Libby Adler

Libby S. Adler

No abstract provided.

Professional Activities, Robert Spector

Robert G. Spector

No abstract provided.

Technical Assistance Provider, Francine Sherman

Francine T. Sherman

Authored Detention Reform and Girls: Challenges and Solutions: JDAI Pathway #13 (2005) and Making Detention Reform Work for Girls: JDAI Practice Guide #5 (2012), provide technical assistance to JDAI sites nationally to reduce detention for girls and improve their conditions of confinement, assess jurisdictions’ use of detention for girls, regularly organize and present JDAI workshops.

Member, National Advisory Committee On Violence Against Women, Francine Sherman

Francine T. Sherman

Appointed by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to advise Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services on how to improve U.S. response to violence against women with a focus on children and teens. Served as Chair of Sub-Committee on Prevention and Social Change. (Report forthcoming, 2012).

Functional Parenting And Dysfunctional Abortion Policy: Reforming Parental Involvement Legislation, Maya Manian

Maya Manian

Abortion-related parental involvement mandates raise important family law issues about the scope of parents’ power over their children’s intimate decisions. While there has been extensive scholarly attention paid to the problems with parental involvement laws, relatively little has been said about strategies for reforming these laws. This article suggests using insights from family law relating to functional parenthood and third party caregiving as a basis for crafting more capacious methods of ensuring adult guidance for teenage girls facing an unplanned pregnancy. Recent developments in family law bolster the case for reforming parental involvement legislation to allow teenagers to consult with …

Co-Organizer: International Conference On Extended And Extending Families, Scott Fitzgibbon

Scott T. FitzGibbon

No abstract provided.

Better Equity For Elders: Basing Couples' Economic Relations Law On Sharing And Caring, Alicia Kelly

Alicia B. Kelly

This essay considers how to achieve better equity in aging through laws governing couples' economic relations. Focusing on family law's contributions to economic vulnerabilities among older people, I critique contemporary law for its hyper-individualistic conception of intra-couple relationships and also for its too narrow and marriage-centric approach to regulating couples' collaborative economic activities. These deficits contribute to inequalities between men and women and between married and unmarried couples. Modern couple's law frequently disadvantages women by neglecting the value and impacts of sharing and caring behaviors within the family. This helps impoverish women across the life cycle, often acutely affecting older …

How Can The Existing Legal Framework With Regard To The Maintenance Of Parents And Protection For The Elderly From Neglect And Abuse Be Reformed?, Jonathan Chen Yeen Muk, Gek Min Yeo

Jonathan Muk

This article examines the existing problems with laws relating to elderly neglect, abuse and maintenance. Suggestions are then made as to how laws can be improved so that the welfare of the elderly can be better taken care of.

Respectable Queerness, Yuvraj Joshi

Yuvraj Joshi

This Article proposes a new theoretical framework to understand public recognition of gay people and relationships. This framework—called “respectable queerness”—suggests that public recognition of gay people and relationships is contingent upon their acquiring a respectable social identity that is actually constituted by public performances of respectability and by privately queer practices. The challenges posed by such recognition include dissonance between one’s public and private selves and fuelling moralism and entrenching divisions between different queer constituencies.

Dirty Harry Meets Dirty Diapers: Masculinities, At-Home Fathers, And Making The Law Work For Families, Beth A. Burkstrand-Reid

Beth A. Burkstrand-Reid

Who is the “man”? Implicit in this question is whether the man at issue demonstrates traits traditionally associated with masculinity: traits such as power, rejecting all things associated with being female, aggression, and being the family breadwinner. If a man, then, abandons paid work and stays at home full time with his children, is he still a “man” as typically defined? The answer to this question bears both on whether families are truly evolving away from the traditional, gendered construct that places men as family breadwinners and women as caregivers and whether work-family balance law meets the needs of these—and …

Legally Invisible: Women’S Property Rights In Polygamous Relationships, Aleksandra M. De Medeiros Vieira

Aleksandra M de Medeiros Vieira

No abstract provided.