Family Law Commons^™

Guardrails Needed For Social Science Research, James G. Dwyer

Faculty Publications

In an article written for a legal audience, The Most Dangerous Branch of Science?: Reining in Rogue Research and Reckless Experimentation in Social Welfare, (Dwyer, 2022), I illustrated this phenomenon by describing what has happened in the child welfare world in recent decades. In the article, I recommend legal reforms to address the problems, including mandating a more robust IRB [institutional review board] review, broadening the concept of unethical research, treating policy experimentation as research subject to ethical rules, and authorizing lawsuits against those who purchase or conduct intentionally skewed studies that result in harmful policy innovations. I offer here …

Retrenchment By Diversion: The New Politics Of Parental Rights, Mary Ziegler, Maxine Eichner, Naomi Cahn

Michigan Law Review

For the past century, the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed the importance of parents’ rights to direct their children’s upbringing and education. Yet suddenly the rhetoric of parental rights is being used to ground a broad range of claims on issues such as what can be taught in public schools, when minors can access gender-affirming care, or who will be punished for helping minors travel for abortion care. Why have parental-rights claims surged so visibly in contemporary law and politics? And are all the new arguments made under the banner of parental rights equally rooted in constitutional precedent?

This Article …

Completing Icwa’S History, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

When the Supreme Court, in Brackeen v. Haaland, upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) — federal legislation making it harder for child family regulation (a.k.a. child protection) agencies to separate Indigenous children from their parents — it centered Congress’s effort to remedy a long history of unwarranted separations of Indigenous families.

Religious Exemptions To Anti-Discrimination Law: Children's Rights In The Constitutional Calculus, Tanya Washington, Catherine Smith, Robin Walker Sterling

Scholarly Articles

Increasingly, religious actors in the public sphere--whether in the provision of goods and services (Masterpiece Cakeshop) or in government contracting (Fulton)--are simply invoking a person's sexual orientation as inconsistent with their religious tenets to benefit from a legal doctrine that shields them from the requirement that they offer an underlying rationale for LGBTQ discrimination. Over the past decade, we have filed amicus briefs in United States Supreme Court cases advancing children's constitutional rights, including briefs providing a check on these religious-based arguments when they adversely impact children's rights in the familial and child regulation contexts and …

Transformative Experiences, Anticipatory Regret, And Informed Consent, Elizabeth Lanphier, Shannon Fyfe

Scholarly Articles

Regret risk is not consistently part of information sharing within informed consent. Yet two kinds of decisions that often invoke concerns about future regret, abortion and sterilization, raise considerations for the role of regret in clinical decision-making and informed consent, particularly regarding decisions about potentially transformative experiences. We distinguish between first-personal and second-personal anticipatory regret and argue that first-personal anticipatory regret can play a productive role, but second-personal anticipatory regret can function in ways that are pernicious. Introducing second-personal anticipatory regret into medical informed consent processes is, we argue, not only not required for informed medical decision-making, but impermissible within …

Table Of Contents, Children's Legal Rights Journal

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The Worst Collateral Consequence: Rethinking The Best Interests Standard In The Context Of Racism, Classism, And Mass Incarceration, Abigail Hean

Children's Legal Rights Journal

The United States incarcerates more people than any other country. In recent years, mandatory minimums, probation revocation, and other laws have led to increased periods of incarceration, even for low-level offenses. When a parent becomes incarcerated, their children are often left in the hands of the state, and a countdown to the termination of parental rights begins. Even if the parent has never been accused of child abuse or neglect, parental rights can be terminated on the grounds that the parent is unable to care for their children while incarcerated. Increasingly, states have placed more emphasis on permanent placement for …

Veiled Child Labor: A Focus On The Almajiranci And Yar Aiki Systems In Northern Nigeria, Aisha Mohammed Suleiman

Children's Legal Rights Journal

Child labor is like a powder keg. It remains a persistent global issue, with millions of children subjected to exploitative practices that strip them of their fundamental rights, access to education, and overall well-being. Although child labor is an increasing issue around the globe, this paper focuses on Northern Nigeria because the Almajiri systems and Yar aiki systems covertly function as platforms for child labor. To examine this issue, this paper adopts a doctrinal approach. It argues that legal reforms alone are insufficient to address these issues. Other challenges, such as insecurity and economic factors, also contribute significantly to children’s …

Equip For Equality: Education Access For Incarcerated Individuals With Disabilities, René J. Valenzuela

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Children's Legal Rights Journal

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Screenings For Dyslexia, Learning Disorders, And Literacy Issues: A U.S. State Legislative Comparative Framework, Andrea Lollini, Maryna Tsapok, Sara Hundt

Children's Legal Rights Journal

This article provides a comparative analysis of state legislation on screening and interventions for dyslexia, language learning disorders, and early literacy issues in the United States. The analysis emphasizes how different approaches to tackling learning deficiencies across states in the U.S. may trigger unequal distribution of services and interventions across the country. Furthermore, the lack of uniform definitions and terminology employed by state lawmakers makes it difficult to evaluate the efficiency of implemented policies. Evidence-based federal guidelines would help set uniform standards for low literacy and LLD screening and interventions in schools nationwide, leading to a more robust and equitable …

Fulfilling Plyler's Promise: Undocumented Students' Access To Education, René J. Valenzuela

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The Benefits And Harms Of School Resource Officers, Abby Hanneman

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Balancing Scrutiny And Privacy: Approaches To Increasing Transparency In The Family Regulation System, Lindsay Nicholas

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

"I Deserve An Education Here Too": Protecting Children With Disabilities In Private School Settings Via State Regulations, Naomi Zweig

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Guardianship And Its Alternatives: A Handbook On Maryland Law, Joan O'Sullivan, Ellen A. Callegary, Rebecca Hall, James F. Silver

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Nationwide Issue: The Failure To Ban Child Marriage In The United States And Its Disparate Impact On Female Youth, Aniejah Humphrey

Children's Legal Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Introduction, In Children And Violence: Agency, Experience, And Representation In And Beyond Armed Conflict (Christelle Molima Bameka Et Al. Eds., 2025), Christelle Molima Bameka, Mohamed Kamara, Mark A. Drumbl

Books and Chapters

This multi-disciplinary volume provides an innovative approach to children and violence, looking beyond the existing literature that focuses on child soldiers in the ‘Global South.’

Harnessing expert contributions from over a dozen countries, the book examines the relationship between children and violence, with a focus on children ensnared in military conflict, embroiled in criminal gangs, and enmeshed in political activism. It analyses how children join fights, how they fight, and what happens to them after fighting officially ends. It addresses cutting- edge issues such as cyberwars, self-defence, intergenerational trauma, gender fluidity, racism and state surveillance. Throughout, the book underscores the …

Scrutinizing Succession, Carrie Stanton

Scholarly Articles

Businesses are at their most vulnerable during leadership transitions. Lack of succession planning has been recognized as a key risk factor, especially for closely held, family-owned businesses, but the problem is more extensive. Even public corporations with supposedly independent boards of directors too often fail to separate the corporation’s interests from those of charismatic leaders who enjoy the perquisites of control and may be loath to surrender it. Shareholders trust directors to manage business affairs, and ensuring leadership continuity is critical to this charge. Yet succession often remains overlooked in practice. It also remains understudied in the literature, and state …

Children As Informers And Denouncers, In Children And Violence: Agency, Experience, And Representation In And Beyond Armed Conflict (Christelle Molima Bameka Et Al. Eds., 2025), Mark A. Drumbl, Barbora Holá

Books and Chapters

This chapter explores the use of children in propaganda and informing networks as forms of violence. While this chapter nests in 20th- century Communism in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, the interface of children with these networks is not unique to these times and places. Indeed, these experiences link to those elsewhere, thereby elucidating the dually manipulated and agentic role of children in a regime’s fight for legitimacy and thereby blending with a number of contributions to this volume including those by Mohamed Kamara and Sylvie Bodineau. The point of this chapter is not to particularise (or pathologise) Soviet and …