ABSTRACT
One of the central debates in family law focuses on the proper balance between parents’ rights and children’s rights. Although this debate plays out in numerous and varied contexts, including child custody,1 religious freedom,2 immigration proceedings,3 education,4 criminal law,5 and the participation of the United States in international treaties,6 the debate is particularly vociferous and the stakes especially high in the context of the child welfare system. In that context, the debate between advocates of parents’ rights and children’s rights is charged and polarized. Elizabeth Bartholet, for example, contends that a pervasive “blood bias” in the child welfare system sacrifices children’s futures.7 She alleges that the state is overly deferential to parents’ rights and far too unwilling to remove children from homes where they have been abused or neglected.8 To Dorothy Roberts, on the other hand, the state intervenes too readily, especially in the lives of African American families. Roberts argues that the disproportionate number of African American children in the child welfare system leads to African American families being “systematically demolished.”9
