Precipitating Legal Change: Children's Rights, Family Definitions, and Judicial Decision-Making

本研究的重点是亲生父母和非亲生父母之间的监护权纠纷，以探讨家庭观念的变化以及父母和儿童权利观念的转变如何随着时间的推移影响司法判决。尽管该项目将使研究人员能够探索一些与家庭、儿童和父母权利以及法律决策问题相关的问题，但本研究的一个主要目的是实证检验两种论点的有效性，这两种论点通常被认为是亲生父母和非亲生父母之间监护权纠纷中法律变化的潜在途径。在法庭上，亲生父母往往在这些纠纷中被偏袒，但许多学者认为，这种偏袒忽视了孩子与非亲生父母之间存在的心理依恋。因此，最近的工作提倡两种截然不同的方法来促进旨在保护儿童依恋关系的法律变革：一些学者认为，法律承认不断扩大的家庭定义是保护儿童依恋关系的关键，而另一些学者则认为，这种保护取决于法律对儿童权利的承认。本研究通过对八个州近40年的司法决策进行深入、纵向、混合的方法研究，考察了这些相互竞争的法律变革来源的效力。因此，本研究有助于对以下几个方面的学术理解：(1)促成法律变革的法律和社会因素；(2)司法决策的过程；(3)社会和法律对家庭定义的变化对监护纠纷中各种当事人的影响；(4)儿童权利论点在监护决策中的效力。通过将这些结果传播给立法者、律师、法官和其他政策制定者，本研究也有可能通过为司法判决提供信息和影响政策建议，影响儿童及其父母的生活（包括生物和非生物）。

This research focuses on custody disputes between biological and nonbiological parents in order to explore how changing conceptions of the family and shifting ideas about parents' and children's rights influence judicial decisions over time. Although the project will enable researchers to explore a number of questions germane to issues of family, children's and parents' rights, and legal decision-making, one primary aim of this research is to empirically examine the efficacy of two arguments that are often suggested as potential avenues for legal change in custody disputes between biological and nonbiological parents. In court, biological parents are often favored in these disputes, but many scholars argue that such a preference ignores the psychological attachments that exist between children and their nonbiological parents. Recent work has, therefore, advocated two distinct approaches for promoting legal changes aimed at protecting children's attachment relationships: some scholars argue that legal recognition of expanding definitions of the family is the key to protecting children's attachments, while others argue that such protection is contingent upon legal recognition of children's rights. This research examines the efficacy of these competing sources of legal change through an in-depth, longitudinal, mixed methods study of judicial decision-making in eight states over a nearly 40 year period. In so doing, this research contributes to scholarly understandings of 1) the legal and social factors that precipitate legal change, 2) the process of judicial decision-making, 3) the implications of changing social and legal definitions of the family for various litigants in custody disputes, and 4) the efficacy of children's rights arguments in custody decision-making. By disseminating these results to legislators, lawyers, judges, and other policymakers, this study also has the potential to influence the lives of children and their parents (both biological and nonbiological) by informing judicial decisions and influencing policy recommendations.