Two presenters were selected from Call for Papers.
Defining and supporting the parent-child relationship pose challenges within the U.S. and globally. Within the U.S, the laws of “who is a parent” are complex, evolving, and variable, resulting in a patchwork of laws that consigns many children (and their parents) to legal limbo and, often, in a disconnect between state and federal government policies on families and the law creating them. Other domestic and international human rights courts wrestle with how the rights of children and adults -- and conflicts among rights-holders -- shape parenthood. Comparative and international human rights law also aid in evaluating the authorization, in the U.S., of new programs of children visiting and even living with incarcerated parents’ allowing contact with their children premised on damage to children from parental absence. Do such programs, common in many other countries, pose special concerns in the U.S. context, due to racial subordination? Another fruitful comparison is how phenomena identified in the U.S. with terms like “the accordion family” and “the boomerang child” may look and function differently in other cultural, political and legal contexts, where there are different approaches to allocating responsibility for human vulnerability between the “private” family and the “public” sector. Finally, U.S. immigration law alternatively facilitates and hinders transnational families. The growing internalization of family law provides an opportunity to bring immigration concerns more openly into the process of developing international family law.
Business Meeting at Program Conclusion.