Doctoral Dissertation Research: Judicial Decision-Making in Custody Cases Involving Nontraditional Families, 1952-1999

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This project examines law's indeterminacy and the process of making and remaking law in the appellate courts, as seen in judicial decision-making in custody cases involving gay and lesbian parents. While there are records of such cases beginning in the 1950s, the explosion of homosexual parenting as both a legal issue and a site of public debate is most evident in the 1980s and 1990s. In deciding these cases, reliance on the "best interest of the child" standard is common if not universal; however, judges' determinations of what constitutes the "best interest" is anything but static. This project addresses three questions: 1) to what extent are judicial rationales and outcomes indeterminate in custody cases involving homosexual parents? 2) what are the specific discourses invoked in these rationales and decisions and how do they help to shape the meaning of the judicial decisions and legal rationales? and 3) what patterns of judicial language and legal meaning can be revealed over time in these decisions? Using archival data spanning a fifty-year time period, the project will investigate the patterns of reasoning and meaning-making apparent in judicial decisions in homosexual parents' custody cases. More specifically, the project will examine discourses related to social movements, psychology and psychiatry, criminality, family structure, morality, and sexuality. This project will shed light on the processes of legal change and institutionalization of meaning over time in the appellate courts.