Introduction to Family Law Quarterly, Volume 54, Number 2

• Author: J. Thomas Oldham

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Introduction to Family Law Quarterly,

Volume 54, Number 2

This issue features three articles on recent developments in the ever-

          Restatement

of Children and the Law, the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision on the

Hague Child Abduction Convention, and varying state approaches to child

support when parents share parenting time.

A working group of the American Law Institute has been, for a few

years, creating the Restatement of Children and the Law. Professors Clare

Huntington and Elizabeth S. Scott summarize the project in their article,

The New Restatement of Children and the Law: Legal Childhood in the

Twenty-First Century. (Professor Scott is the Chief Restatement Reporter

and Professor Huntington is one of the Associate Reporters.)

They write that the core principle and policy goal of the project has been

to endorse policies that promote what they refer to as “child well-being.”

Among other things, the authors state that one goal of the project has been

to integrate behavioral and biological research on child and adolescent

development, as well as empirical research about the effectiveness of

various policy interventions pertaining to children. Another overriding

goal has been to recognize, and suggest ways to remediate, embedded

racial and class biases that have impacted the regulation of children and

their families in the United States.

The Restatement is organized in four Parts: “Children in Families,”

“Children in Schools,” “Children in the Justice System,” and “Children

in Society.” Readers of this journal may be particularly interested in Part

II of the Huntington-Scott article, in which the authors discuss “The

Restatement and Parental Rights.” In this Part, they address the Restatement

view of parental rights, which includes a section on corporal punishment

and a discussion of the parental right generally to make healthcare choices

for a child. The authors also explain why the Restatement supports the

recognition of rights of de facto parents.

Professor Ann Laquer Estin’s article, Where Is the Child at Home?

Determining Habitual Residence after Monasky, addresses Monasky

v. Taglieri, a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Hague Child

Abduction Convention. Pursuant to the Convention, if a child is wrongfully

removed or retained away from his or her country of “habitual residence,”

the child generally is to be returned to the country of habitual residence

for any custody determination. In her article, Professor Estin explains

that, for decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has provided no guidance about

Published in Family Law Quarterly, Volume 54, Numbers 1 & 2, 2020. © 2021 American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof

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