January 2018

• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Author: Robert E. Emery,Barbara A. Babb
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12314
• Date: 01 January 2018

EDITORIAL NOTE

JANUARY 2018

The communities of Family Court Review (FCR), the Association of Family and Conciliation

Courts (AFCC), and the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University have experienced a

tremendous loss with the unexpected death of our dear friend and colleague, Professor J. Herbie

DiFonzo. While many still are coming to terms with his untimely passing, we begin to honor Herbie

by dedicating the January 2018 issue of FCR to him. Five touching and heartfelt tributes launch this

issue, including reflections by Peter Salem, AFCC Executive Director; Andrew Schepard, FCR Edi-

tor Emeritus; Alexandra Faver, Managing Editor of Notes and Comments for FCR Volume 56; the

Honorable Gail Prudenti, Dean of the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University; and

Marsha Kline Pruett, AFCC Past President. We also honor Herbie by reprinting his coauthored arti-

cle, “The Family Law Education Reform Project Final Report,” a favorite among his countless pro-

fessional undertakings and one that has changed dramatically how law school faculty across the

nation teach family law. We know that moving forward, AFCC and Hofstra’s Law School plan to

recognize Herbie’s life and work in additional ways. For now, we hope these tributes help us remem-

ber the kind, brilliant, passionate, dedicated colleague we have lost.

We are privileged in this issue to print an adaptation of Dr. Bernie Mayer’s AFCC 2017 Annual

Conference plenary speech, “Can We Talk? What We Have Learned About How to Have Productive

Conflicts About Family Policy and Family Law.” Dr. Mayer discusses the important role AFCC has

played in facilitating constructive conversation about pressing and controversial issues, but he also

highlights the need for us to continue to address and enhance our capacity to communicate about and

across differences.

We next offer four articles we believe are of great interest and importance to our wide reader-

ship. Allison T. O’Neill, Kay Bussey, Christopher J. Lennings, and Katie M. Seidler have written

“The Views of Psychologists, Lawyers, and Judges on Key Components and the Quality of Child

Custody Evaluations in Australia.” They hope that the results of their study can inform best practices

in and can enhance the quality of child custody evaluations to better serve families and children. We

continue the practice initiated in the April 2017 issue of publishing a longer article, Michael L. Perlin

and Alison J. Lynch’s “’She’s Nobody’s Child/The Law Can’t Touch Her at All’: Seeking to Bring

Dignity to Legal Proceedings Involving Juveniles.” The authors argue that therapeutic jurisprudence

and international human rights laws have a critical role to play to enhance and dignify the juvenile

justice process, which they recount as badly flawed. Marsha Kline Pruett, Andrew Schepard, Logan

Cornett, Corina Gerety, and Rebecca Love Kourlis have authored “Law Students on Interdisciplin-

ary, Problem-Solving Teams: An Empirical Evaluation of Educational Outcomes at the University of

Denver’s Resource Center for Separating and Divorcing Families (RCSDF).” They discuss the bene-

fits to both family law clients and law students derived from a creative alternative dispute resolution

process designed to meet more effectively the needs of families and children. In the final article,

“Critical Review of Research Evidence of Parenting Coordination’s Effectiveness,” Robin Deutsch,

Gabriela Misca, and Chioma Ajoku thoroughly assess the available empirical evidence on the effec-

tiveness of parenting coordination. In addition to drawing conclusions about the practice, they high-

light the need for further research.

Four student notes comprise the next section of this issue; we are pleased to be able to publish

these excellent works. In “Pat-Downs But No Hugs: Why Prison Visitation Protocol Should Be

Changed to Help Keep Familial Structures Intact,” Safia Fasah discusses the need for visitation

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 56 No. 1, January 2018 5–6

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C2018 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts