Juvenile Law Commons^™

Kindly Remove My Child From The Bubble Wrap - Analyzing Childress V. Madison County And Why Tennessee Courts Should Enforce Parental Pre-Injury Liability Concerns, Joshua D. Arters, Ben M. Rose

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

“I overstepped my parental boundaries at the Aiguille Rock Climbing Center . . . . I signed a waiver absolving it of blame if my daughter pulled a Humpty Dumpty from the top of a wall. The Florida Supreme Court recently ruled I didn't have that right. I can make all kinds of decisions for my girl, including life-and-death calls on medical care. But I can’t judge the risk she will take scaling a 20-foot wall and decide it is so miniscule that I’m willing to sign a waiver so she can do it—not even if I’m holding the safety …

In Re: Tennessee Supreme Court Rule 40a No. M2009-01926-Sc-Rl2-Rl, The Supreme Court Of Tennessee

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

No Champion For Children: Tennessee's Rule 40a And The Appointment Of Guardians Ad Litem In Custody Proceedings, Austin Elizabeth Kupke

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Is Parenting Authority A Usurpation Of Judicial Authority? Harmonizing Authority For, Benefits Of, And Limitations On This Legal-Psychological Hybrid, Joi T. Montiel

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

A “Parenting Coordinator” assists high-conflict parents in resolving disputes that arise in the parents’ efforts to jointly parent their children after a divorce. The Parenting Coordinator simultaneously educates the parents so as to minimize the degree and frequency of future conflict. While Parenting Coordination is not mediation or arbitration, it is also not counseling. Instead, Parenting Coordination is a “legal-psychological hybrid.” A trial court’s delegation to one in this hybrid role the power to determine a fit parent’s access to her child is arguably an improper delegation of judicial authority. While thirteen states have comprehensive schemes setting out their Parenting …

Panel Discussion 4: Best Practices In Representing Children In Court, Timothy Irwin, Carlton Lewis, Dwight Stokes

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

In Loco Reipublicae And The Parental Duty To Expose Children To Ideas Outside The Home, Catherine Smith

Scholarly Articles

In Loco Reipublicaie boldly centers children’s rights and adeptly fills an existing jurisprudential gap by infusing parental rights with important duties to respect and facilitate children’s exercise of their own citizenship rights. It is a children’s-rights-forward shot across a heavily prioritized parents’ rights bow. It’s about time.

University Of The District Of Columbia Law Review, University Of The District Of Columbia Law Review

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fund Kinship Caregivers To Help Keep Families Together, Not Separate Them, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

Money impacts relationships. And when the money involved is a foster care subsidy to kinship caregivers, it can drive a wedge in relationships between parents and kinship caregivers that should be strengthened, not strained. Unfortunately, foster care funding incentivizes the “relational disruption”1 endemic to foster care, when it should instead support family members coming together to support each other and their children.

In contrast, Medicaid funding has increasingly supported family members taking care of each other and can provide child welfare with a model for funding family caregiving without disrupting relationships and without even requiring a family court or foster …

Legally Sanctioned Takings Of Black Children: How Slavery Reverberates In The Modern Child Welfare System, Abigail Mitchell

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

This article explores the link between the taking of Black children from their families perpetrated as part of American slavery and modern takings in the modern family policing system. This article posits that underpinning both systems is a pervasive paternalism that purports to be benevolent but has been weaponized to systematically traumatize Black children and villainize Black parents. This article takes a sweeping historical perspective and connects the same discourse used to justify slavery to that which has permeated the modern family policing system.

A Parent's Guide To Social Media Safety, Catherine Grimley

Gator Team Child Juvenile Law Clinic

The goal of this White Paper is to provide parents and other caregivers with a compilation of literature from some of the most popular social media platforms in one convenient place. It aims to help parents understand what parental controls and account settings are available, so they can facilitate important conversations with their teens regarding social media safety.

The Right To Preschool: Once A Wartime Necessity, Now A Fundamental Step Towards Educational Equity, Alex Raskin

Journal of Law and Policy

The most vital time for cognitive development is the first five years of a child’s life, impacting everything from language skills to social and emotional abilities. This makes access to high-quality universal preschool a necessity, as increasingly more families are without stable childcare in America. Preschool tuition now averages $10,000 annually and without paid parental leave, millions of children are left without formal learning or adequate supervision before kindergarten. This disproportionately impacts Black and brown students and students with disabilities, while continuing cycles of poverty and the gender wage gap. The only time the U.S. government provided high-quality universal preschool …

Supporting Healthy Futures: Capitalizing On Medicaid’S Epsdt Medical Necessity Standard, Teressa Colhoun

Washington and Lee Law Review

Youth mental health is in crisis. Children report increased rates of suicidal ideology, depression, and anxiety. Diagnosis rates soar. Pediatric mental health care remains difficult to access. When services are accessible, they are costly—often sending families into medical debt.

This Note discusses Medicaid’s Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment (“EPSDT”) benefit. Specifically, it studies the EPSDT benefit’s creation, structure, and administration. This Note focuses on the context in which the EPSDT benefit operates, particularly how health care financing models impact benefit administration. It suggests that the EPSDT benefit has the capacity to address crucial gaps in pediatric mental health …

Brief Of Children’S Rights Advocates In Support Of Appellees: Held V. Montana, Asha Brundage-Moore, Wyatt Sassman, Catherine Smith

Scholarly Articles

Amici Curiae are members of the Consortium for the Advancement of Children’s Constitutional Rights and Healthy Mothers, Heathy Babies: The Montana Coalition who are children’s rights advocates and legal scholars. Amici submit this brief to: (1) highlight Montana’s Constitution as a leader in advancing children’s constitutional rights; (2) draw this Court’s attention to the Montana Constitution’s text and history recognizing children’s right to a clean and healthful environment; and (3) explain that a decision not to safeguard children’s right to a clean and healthful environment in reliance on adult-centric analytical missteps advanced by Appellants (and supporting Amici) would deny Montana’s …

Kidfluencers: New Child Stars In Need Of Protection, Mikayla B. Jayroe

Arkansas Law Review

Despite the explosive growth of social media and various lobbying efforts, the legal system has fallen woefully behind in extending labor protections to children engaged in social media production. This Comment will offer a solution to the current gray area surrounding kidfluencers and the lack of protections they are afforded. First, this Comment will discuss the emergence and growth of the kidfluencer industry and explore the legal history of child labor laws in the United States, specifically evaluating protections historically provided to child actors. Second, this Comment will explain why posts by kidfluencers should be considered work, explore the harms …

Parental Rights: Rhetoric Versus Doctrine, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Josh Gupta-Kagan observes that the Restatement of Children and the Law does not transform the law of child abuse and neglect. As he contends, this is neither a feature nor a bug. It is simply the reality of a restatement, which can only nudge, not reform, the law. I agree with Gupta-Kagan that only political will, not the American Law Institute (ALI), can fix the significant problems with the family regulation system. For advocates and scholars — including both of us — who seek structural and doctrinal change, the ALI has principles projects, and there is a broader ecosystem …

Restating The Law In A Child Wellbeing Framework, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The Restatement of Children and the Law is scheduled for formal adoption by the American Law Institute in 2024. When this project was first proposed, it was met with some skepticism, on the view that the regulation of children was not a coherent field of law. But after eight years of work on this Restatement, the Reporters have produced a comprehensive account of the law’s treatment of children and clarified that it is, indeed, an integrated and coherent area of law. Our work has uncovered a deep structure and logic that shapes the legal regulation of children in the family, …

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 …

Growing Pains: An Arkansas Case Study On Adolescent Autonomy And Access To Puberty Blockers For Gender-Affirming Care, Katherine T. Litaker

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Arkansas Act 626 outlaws any gender-affirming medical treatment for persons under eighteen years of age. This Note focuses on the evolving litigation surrounding Arkansas Act 626, the potential repercussions of the issues facing transgender adolescents, and the legal protections that may be implemented whether or not Arkansas Act 626 is upheld as a constitutional piece of legislation. It begins by examining the standard bases for administering puberty blocker treatments and addressing many of the misconceptions in medical treatment that have influenced the shaping of legislation on transgender healthcare. The Note discusses the current legal barricades for adolescents trying to access …

Amended Expert Disclosure Report: Navahine V. Dept. Of Transportation, State Of Hawai’I, Catherine Smith

Scholarly Articles

From a historical and sociological legal perspective, children in America, including in Hawai'i, require extraordinary legal protection from the harm of climate change and the government actions causing them harm. Hawai'i has a long history and tradition of leading the way on broadening rights and protections under state law, particularly for children. The principles of intergenerational justice and equity at the heart of the public trust doctrine in Hawai'i similarly require that courts accord special attention and protection for children.

On June 20, 2024, the youth-powered Navahine case settled, resulting in the first constitutional climate settlement of its kind in …

Children's Right To Access Potentially Critical Learning: Liberating Youth From Propagation Of Structural Injustice, Melina Constantine Bell

Scholarly Articles

Over the past two years, U.S. states have passed educational gag orders (“EGOs”) that prohibit teaching about antiracism and LGBTQ+ identities. EGOs are destructive in at least two ways. First, they violate children’s right to access information that is potentially critical for their individual well-being. Second, they interfere with cultivating mutual respect in a pluralistic society, which serves children’s present and future wellbeing interests. In this article, I aim to demonstrate the harms that EGOs inflict, and how revising the legal framework governing children’s rights in the United States can increase both children’s and adults’ well-being. That revision entails the …

In The Shadow Of Monetization: The Conflicting Interests Of Parents And Children In The Commercialization Of Social Media: An Analysis Of The United States Legal Precedent Child Labor Regulation And Protections Within A New Industry, Taylor Rathwell

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Children's Legal Rights Journal

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Sorry, Kid, You Have No Rights Here: How Can We Protect Unadjudicated Youth In Private Residential Treatment Facilities From Harmful And Unnecessary Strip Searches?, Amanda Simmons

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The Best Interests Of The Child In Judicial Perspective: Morocco And Chile As Case-Studies (1990-2020), Susana Sanz-Caballero

Children's Legal Rights Journal

Is there a common understanding in the judiciary process about what “the child’s best interests” are, regardless of geographic location or legal order? In every nation, when disputes impacting minors arise, judges emerge as the final adjudicators. Judges, as final adjudicators, appear to be in the best possible position to determine a child’s best interests and apply the notion fairly and appropriately. However, the concept of a child’s “best interests” is far from uniform, varying across cultures and individual family dynamics. It is an invaluable exercise to review the national case law of different countries to test whether the concept …

Policing Morality: The Inconsistent Application Of The Moral Fitness And Fitness Factor, Ariana D. Meyers, Gabrielle C. Wolf

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The Promise Of Pell: Pell Grants For Justice System Involved Youth After The Fafsa Simplification Act, Mary Hornschemeier Bandstra

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Extended Jurisdiction Juvenile Prosecutions: "One Last Chance" Or A False Promise?, Ari Seckler

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Children's Legal Rights Journal

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Foster Care: How Foster Parent Intervention Affects The Child Welfare System, Olivia Mcgrath

Children's Legal Rights Journal

"Every child is entitled to a caregiver who can support the family's efforts toward a successful reunification." The National Training and Development Curriculum for Foster and Adoptive Parents provided by the Children's Bureau clearly states the rights of a child in foster care. A child removed from their biological family's home deserves the efforts of the child welfare system, their biological parents, and their foster parents to work toward returning the child to their home. "Foster to adopt" is a misleading term that contradicts the role of a foster parent. Federal and state legislation defines the primary goal of foster …

The Direction Of Child Labor Legislation: Exploring Divergent Perspectives About The Standard For Child Labor Laws, Taylor Rathwell

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.