Promoting Permanency and Human Rights

An increasing number of children are being cared for exclusively by grandparents or extended family. The majority of these caregivers are raising children outside of the foster care system without a formal legal status. In fact, kinship diversion, placing children whose parents cannot or will not care for them with family or friends outside of the foster care system, is encouraged by state and federal law. Informal kinship caregivers face many obstacles to providing care for children and they are more likely to be unemployed, receive government benefits, and be less educated, as compared with parents raising their own children. In addition, the majority of these caregivers live in poverty, and few receive adequate subsidies or other support for the children in their care. When an informal kinship caregiver living in poverty wishes to move for permanency, through adoption or permanent guardianship proceedings, the out-of-pocket expenses are an obstacle — the costs of a private adoption or permanent guardianship proceeding top $3,000, not including attorney’s fees. While adoptions and permanent guardianships are at least partially subsidized when the children are in foster care, the subsidies for these legal proceedings for informal kinship caregivers living in poverty are inadequate in many states. In those states, informal kinship caregivers living in poverty who wish to move for permanency for the children in their care are barred from doing so for lack of funds. Using a human rights lens to analyze the applicable law, regulations, and practices of all fifty states and the federal government, this article argues for the subsidization of private adoptions and permanent guardianships for kinship caregivers living in poverty

Local Human Rights Lawyering

International human rights offer a powerful set of norms that have helped domestic advocates to successfully secure additional civil, political, economic and social rights for those living in poverty in the U.S. Legal aid attorneys, public defenders, and other public interest advocates have recognized human rights as an additional advocacy tool and are increasingly using human rights arguments in U.S. courts. This article examines three cases in which legal aid attorneys and public defenders successfully used human rights arguments in U.S. courts, and discusses emerging best practices for using human rights in litigation in the U.S

A Human Rights Code of Conduct: Ambitious Moral Aspiration for a Public Interest Law Office or Law Clinic

The standards regulating the decision-making and behavior of lawyers in the U.S. currently provide inadequate guidance for many of the ethical dilemmas that practicing attorneys face on a daily basis. Universal human rights principles—the concepts of morality underlying much of human rights law—provide more ambitious moral direction that lawyers can use to guide decision-making and behavior. This article discusses why additional aspirational goals are needed for the legal profession and explains how and why to apply universal human rights principles to lawyering in the U.S. The article goes on to introduce the idea of adopting a human rights code of conduct for a public interest law office or law clinic. Included with this article are sample human rights codes of conduct used by a legal aid organization, a human rights organization, and a law clinic, as well as practical suggestions for leading efforts to adopt a human rights code of conduct