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

本项目研究法律的不确定性和上诉法院制定和重新制定法律的过程，如涉及男女同性恋父母的监护权案件的司法决策。虽然从20世纪50年代开始就有这类案件的记录，但同性恋养育子女作为一个法律的问题和公众辩论的场所的爆炸性增长在20世纪80年代和90年代最为明显。在裁决这些案件时，依赖“儿童的最大利益”标准即使不是普遍的，也是常见的;然而，法官对什么构成“最大利益”的决定绝不是静态的。本研究针对三个问题：1）在涉及同性恋父母的监护权案件中，司法依据和结果在多大程度上是不确定的？2)这些理论和裁决中援引了哪些具体论述，它们如何有助于形成司法裁决和法律的理论的含义？以及3）随着时间的推移，这些判决中可以揭示出哪些司法语言和法律的含义模式？该项目将利用跨越50年的档案数据，调查同性恋父母监护权案件司法判决中明显的推理和意义形成模式。 更具体地说，该项目将研究与社会运动，心理学和精神病学，犯罪，家庭结构，道德和性有关的话语。 这个项目将阐明法律的变化过程和意义随着时间的推移在上诉法院的制度化。

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.