The Adoption and Safe Families Act: Proposing a “Best Efforts” Standard to Eliminate the Ultimate Obstacle for Family Reunification

The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) was enacted in an attempt to expedite the child's permanency plan by pushing for adoption of children in foster care. The ASFA requires the U.S. Department of Health to make reasonable efforts to reunify and preserve existing families while rewarding the states for increased adoption of foster care children. The ASFA was enacted to ensure the best interests of the child are to remain paramount, but in practice, the ASFA is furthering the best interests of the state. This Note proposes amendment of the ASFA to increase the obligation of the Department of Social Services (DSS) to make its best efforts to preserve and reunify the existing family unit, while also imposing a penalty if the DSS fails to do so.     

论量刑因果关系的司法证明-刑事一体化的视角

量刑因果关系是刑法因果关系中的一个重要方面。在刑事法治中,量刑应当同定罪一样受到同等的重视。本文从量刑因果关系的刑事整体性研究入手,从刑法和刑诉法的角度对其进行审视与判断。在微观正义论和司法复杂性的原理和要求下,量刑因果关系的证明要素被分为说明性的证明要素和假设性的证明要素。这两种证明要素在具体的证明路径和过程要求中存在差别。量刑因果关系的证明主体存在多样化特征。量刑因果关系的证明责任在证明标准的特殊背景下,更加注重检察官与被告人的不同角色要求。     

Surrogacy,Identity, Parentage and Childrenʼs Rights – Through the Eyes of a Child

In this article I will focus on two important aspects of children's rights which are impacted by artificial reproductive technology (particularly surrogacy); being the rights to identity and the rights to legal parentage. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child acknowledges the importance of a child's right to identity, to be protected from discrimination on the basis of the status or beliefs of the child's parents, legal guardians or family members. For many children born through surrogacy arrangements, they may have only one or no legally recognized parent. The adults caring for them may have parental responsibility orders but this falls well short of providing children with the benefits and protections that legal parentage does. The issue of identity can be complex. Increasingly, states have recognized the importance of children knowing the circumstances of their birth and being able to access biological and genetic information including medical information. From a child's perspective the issues of identity and parenthood are intertwined. Given the importance of identity, more needs to be done to ensure that identifying information about children born as a result of artificial reproductive technology is properly stored and readily accessible for these children. Denying a child legal parentage when there are no concerns about the care being provided by their parents cannot be justified when considered from a children's rights perspective.     

改革三十年家庭联产承包责任制面临新挑战——基于印江自治县的调查与思考

根据印江自治县农村现状的分析,指出现行家庭联产承包责任制存在自首次承包以来从未调整,土地承包方式没变,农村劳动力大量外出打工耕地大面积荒芜等弊端,并提出完善和改进这一制度的看法。     

Social Norms and the Feeling of Justice about Unequal Family Practices

After briefly retracing the origins of the present day unbalanced division of family work, this paper article summarizes results from three studies conducted with married adults and unmarried young adults from northern Portugal. The data support the idea that (a) unequal family practices do not change because traditional practices are social norms that orientate individuals’ behavior; (b) individuals do not comply passively to these social norms but consider that the normative practices are fair; (c) normative family practices are considered to be fair because women, as well as men, seem to gain benefits from traditional family organization. The social consequences for women of the maintenance of normative family practices are discussed.

Mainstreaming Therapeutic Jurisprudence in Family Law: The Israeli Child Protection Law as a Case Study

This article considers the contribution of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) to the theoretical development and practical advancement of reforms in child care law. It does so by presenting three dilemmas arising from The Israeli Youth Law (Care and Supervision) 1960 relating to its substance, procedures, and practice. TJ is a “field of enquiry” that examines the influence of the law on litigants in order to advance rules and practices that have therapeutic effects and to minimize the use of rules and practices that have antitherapeutic ones. Following the TJ methodology, we integrate psychosocial findings into the legal discussion. We propose some therapeutic practices, as well as legal reform to make the child protection legal regime more TJ friendly for children and families.     

The Nature and Determinants of Child Representation Practice in Child Welfare Cases

The representation of children in dependency cases is an emerging legal specialty. Although scholars have attempted to articulate the duties that should characterize best practices, there has been little, if any, research concerning what child representatives actually do in practice. Using a sample of 168 child representatives in Georgia and Washington State, this study examines the relative significance of various case‐related activities and how these vary as a function of case‐ and attorney‐level characteristics. Based on the findings, we conclude that attorney activities are influenced by a combination of case and attorney characteristics, suggesting several distinct avenues for improving legal representation for children in dependency cases.     

Judges’ Perceptions of Screening,Assessment, Prevention,and Treatment for Substance Use, Mental Health,and HIV among Juveniles on Community Supervision: Results of a National Survey

Juvenile Justice‐Translational Research on Interventions for Adolescents in the Legal System (JJ‐TRIALS) National Survey was funded in part to describe the current status of screening, assessment, prevention and treatment for substance use, mental health, and HIV for youth on community supervision within the US juvenile justice system. Surveys were administered to community supervision agencies and their primary behavioral healthcare providers, as well as the juvenile or family court judge with the largest caseload of youth on community supervision. This article presents the findings from the judges’ survey. Survey results indicated juvenile and family court judges were open to innovations for improving the court's performance, rated their relationships with collaborators highly, and appreciated the impact of screening, assessment, prevention, and treatment on judicial practices.     

The Next Generation: Creating New Peace Processes in the Middle East

This essay describes how Israeli students in a course on mediation and consensus building taught in an Israeli university law department by an American law professor and an Israeli instructor analyzed and studied the conflict in the Middle East. It describes the suggestions they made for process design for the next stages of whatever peace process might emerge for the region. In light of the students' suggestions, the authors present some ideas as to how different approaches to reconciliation and peace might be used, managed, and coordinated.     

The Examination of Commercial Printing Defects to Assess Common Origin,Batch Variation,and Error Rate*

Abstract: The examination of printing defects, or imperfections, found on printed or copied documents has been recognized as a generally accepted approach for linking questioned documents to a common source. This research paper will highlight the results from two mutually exclusive studies. The first involved the examination and characterization of printing defects found in a controlled production run of 500,000 envelopes bearing text and images. It was concluded that printing defects are random occurrences and that morphological differences can be used to identify variations within the same production batch. The second part incorporated a blind study to assess the error rate of associating randomly selected envelopes from different retail locations to a known source. The examination was based on the comparison of printing defects in the security patterns found in some envelopes. The results demonstrated that it is possible to associate envelopes to a common origin with a 0% error rate.