Challenging \u3ci\u3eMonoHumanism\u3c/i\u3e: An Argument for Changing the Way We Think About Intercountry Adoption

The Convention on the Rights of the Child\u27 (CRC) provides a legal framework that establishes a child\u27s right to be raised in the context of her family and her culture. We regularly violate this most fundamental right of children because we fail to come to terms with our imperialist orientation toward the world. This failure has been caused, in part, by how we have constructed our way of thinking about intercountry adoption. We now have a conception of intercountry adoption that I refer to in this Article as MonoHumanism. In the context of intercountry adoption, MonoHumanism means that children are not seen in the context of their family, community, and culture, but instead, narrowly as the potential children of Western adults. In other words, children are seen through a narrative of identity in the United States, which I am calling MonoHumanism, to the exclusion of knowledge and discourse with its origins in the lives, cultures, and vocabulary of the children themselves

Race, Identity, and Professional Responsibility: Why Legal Services Organizations Need African American Staff Attorneys

Given the fundamental importance of the attorney-client relationship in securing favorable outcomes for clients, legal services organizations that serve large populations of African Americans should employ African American staff attorneys because: (1) African American lawyers and clients share a group identity that makes it more likely that a black attorney will be able to gain a black client\u27s trust; (2) black attorneys communicate more effectively with black clients; and (3) the perception of a judicial system that is unfair and racist is likely to encourage black clients to trust black lawyers more than white lawyers, who are more likely to be perceived as part of the system. Empirical evidence from the legal and medical fields show that African American clients are more likely to trust and communicate effectively with African American service providers. This Article also explores, however, the reasons why some African Americans may not want a black attorney. One reason is that black clients may feel better off with a white lawyer precisely because racism infects the American judicial system. Another reason may be that some African Americans may believe that white lawyers are better lawyers. Finally, in some circumstances, a black client may not want a black lawyer if he perceives the lawyer as not black enough. Notwithstanding some of these preferences, however, the empirical evidence strongly suggests that more often than not, black clients prefer black lawyers. Because race consideration in staffing implicates discrimination law, this Article also considers recent Supreme Court precedent that affects the ability of certain organizations to engage in color-conscious actions. According to a plurality of the Court in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, the school assignment programs at issue conflicted with the premise of Brown, which requires strict adherence to colorblindness. Unfortunately, this approach ignores the continuing power of race and is a stark departure from Justice Blackmun\u27s defense of affirmative action in Bakke. While a definitive conclusion as to when the law allows color-consciousness is difficult in light of the Court\u27s recent decisions, the theme of this Article echoes Justice Blackmun. In essence, this Article argues that we cannot solve the problems that face African Americans by removing race-consciousness from the dialogue about diversity in the legal profession

Child Migrants and America’s Evolving Immigration Mission

This Article explores the many challenges—legal and otherwise—that child migrants face as they attempt to navigate the complex web of courts, laws, and shifting political landscapes to become naturalized United States citizens, while putting these challenges in the context of an immigration system that has long been shaped by politics of exclusion and xenophobia that have shaped immigration law and policy in the United States for over one-hundred years. Such an investigation comes at a time when the issue of immigration in the United States is increasingly complex and contested. As the Trump administration mulls over new prototypes for a wall along the U.S./Mexico border, issues travel bans targeting Muslim-majority countries, and threatens to end the Obama-era DACA program in a bid to realize the president’s campaign slogan of “America First,” advocates for a more liberal, humanitarian immigration system cite America’s legacy as the quintessential nation of immigrants to challenge the xenophobia and politics of exclusion that have recently informed the debate about immigration reform. Notwithstanding this cited legacy, the United States has a long history of the politics of exclusion shaping its immigration system. Thus, this Article attempts to provide additional context for this current—and historical—immigration debate, and argues that political expedience, Cold War ideology, racial prejudice, and politics of exclusion and xenophobia—as contrasted with principles of justice and equality—have long shaped how the United States fashions official immigration law and policy

Challenging \u3ci\u3eMonoHumanism\u3c/i\u3e: An Argument for Changing the Way We Think About Intercountry Adoption

The Convention on the Rights of the Child\u27 (CRC) provides a legal framework that establishes a child\u27s right to be raised in the context of her family and her culture. We regularly violate this most fundamental right of children because we fail to come to terms with our imperialist orientation toward the world. This failure has been caused, in part, by how we have constructed our way of thinking about intercountry adoption. We now have a conception of intercountry adoption that I refer to in this Article as MonoHumanism. In the context of intercountry adoption, MonoHumanism means that children are not seen in the context of their family, community, and culture, but instead, narrowly as the potential children of Western adults. In other words, children are seen through a narrative of identity in the United States, which I am calling MonoHumanism, to the exclusion of knowledge and discourse with its origins in the lives, cultures, and vocabulary of the children themselves

Race, Identity, and Professional Responsibility: Why Legal Services Organizations Need African American Staff Attorneys

Given the fundamental importance of the attorney-client relationship in securing favorable outcomes for clients, legal services organizations that serve large populations of African Americans should employ African American staff attorneys because: (1) African American lawyers and clients share a group identity that makes it more likely that a black attorney will be able to gain a black client\u27s trust; (2) black attorneys communicate more effectively with black clients; and (3) the perception of a judicial system that is unfair and racist is likely to encourage black clients to trust black lawyers more than white lawyers, who are more likely to be perceived as part of the system. Empirical evidence from the legal and medical fields show that African American clients are more likely to trust and communicate effectively with African American service providers. This Article also explores, however, the reasons why some African Americans may not want a black attorney. One reason is that black clients may feel better off with a white lawyer precisely because racism infects the American judicial system. Another reason may be that some African Americans may believe that white lawyers are better lawyers. Finally, in some circumstances, a black client may not want a black lawyer if he perceives the lawyer as not black enough. Notwithstanding some of these preferences, however, the empirical evidence strongly suggests that more often than not, black clients prefer black lawyers. Because race consideration in staffing implicates discrimination law, this Article also considers recent Supreme Court precedent that affects the ability of certain organizations to engage in color-conscious actions. According to a plurality of the Court in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, the school assignment programs at issue conflicted with the premise of Brown, which requires strict adherence to colorblindness. Unfortunately, this approach ignores the continuing power of race and is a stark departure from Justice Blackmun\u27s defense of affirmative action in Bakke. While a definitive conclusion as to when the law allows color-consciousness is difficult in light of the Court\u27s recent decisions, the theme of this Article echoes Justice Blackmun. In essence, this Article argues that we cannot solve the problems that face African Americans by removing race-consciousness from the dialogue about diversity in the legal profession

The Family Law Canon in a (Post?) Racial Era

While the debate about a post-racial society rages, our justice system continues to operate in a way that is race-conscious. It seems as though most of the discussion about race and the justice system concerns criminal justice, juvenile justice, education, and immigration. But race consciousness also impacts family law. Nonetheless, the family law canon does not scrutinize race-based disparities in laws, procedures, and outcomes, and that omission feeds a mistaken notion of a race-blind or a post-racial society. One consequence of this omission is that it obscures race-based decision making by legislatures, judges, legal reform organizations, legal scholars, lawyers, and child welfare workers, and thereby immunizes race-based decision making from scrutiny. This article suggests that the family law canon inaccurately describes a race-neutral or post-racial state for family law and that the canon should correct its colorblindness so that legal authorities can address the problems that structural racism creates for African-American families

U.S. Immigration Law and the Traditional Nuclear Conception of Family: Toward a Functional Definition of Family that Protects Children\u27s Fundamental Human Rights

Although the paramount purpose of United States immigration law is not to protect the integrity of family, U.S.immigration law does explicitly aim to do so in certain circumstances. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) includes family reunification provisions, for example, which allow United States citizens and lawful permanent residents to petition for family members who live in other countries to join them in the United States. Even the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), often described as a draconian statute, technically allows otherwise removable aliens to remain in the United States if removal would result in exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to the alien\u27s [U.S. citizen or resident] spouse, parent, or child. But even where the United States aims to further family unity, it fails to do so because U.S. immigration law reflects a legal construction of the family concept that is largely premised on biology, is grounded in the traditional conception of a nuclear family, and excludes what this Article calls functional families: formations which may not satisfy this narrow conception of family, but satisfy the care-taking needs of children. By excluding functional families, the United States ignores the reality of millions of families who are affected by its immigration laws, separates children from their families, and fails to honor a child\u27s right to family as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and international law as it has developed in Europe and the Americas. This Article suggests that the notion of parenthood that is reflected in U.S. immigration law should be reconsidered and modified to reflect a definition grounded in relationships and care, or what has been described by Professor Nancy Dowd in a slightly different context as nurture. \u27 This would likely include, for example, the psychological, physical, intellectual, and spiritual care of children. In this Article, the primary focus, therefore, is on what has been described as in loco parentis relationships between children and relatives who are not their biological parents. In other words, relationships in which an adult is operating as a parental figure for a child in a way that results in the child seeing the adult as a parental figure

The Hague Convention and Domestic Violence: Proposals for Balancing the Policies of Discouraging Child Abduction and Protecting Children from Domestic Violence

The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (the Convention) was enacted in response to a pattern of parental abduction across international borders to thwart or preempt custody arrangements in one country and seek a more advantageous setting for litigating custody issues in another. Consequently, the Convention was designed to discourage the abduction of children across international borders and to encourage respect for custody and access arrangements in countries from which children were abducted. To implement the Convention, the United States enacted the International Child Abduction Remedies Act (ICARA) on April 29, 1988. Much has been written in recent years about the conflict between the Convention and laws designed to protect children from parental abuse or domestic violence, in part due to growing evidence that a majority of return cases are brought by men against women, many involving women alleging that they are fleeing with their children from domestic abuse. This article explores ways of correcting an imbalance that favors the policy of preventing child abduction at the expense of exposing children to domestic violence and makes recommendations for standardizing the outcomes of cases in U.S. courts involving allegations of parental abuse or other domestic violence, given a concerning trend of ad hoc and inconsistent results in cases decided under the Convention

Immigration, Adoption and Our National Identity

In this Article, I tell the story of intercountry adoption. Our starting point is the beginning of the adoption process, with so-called “sending countries,” in which I explore the reasons that countries enter their children into the intercountry adoption market. We begin in the aftermath of World War II and continue until the present day. The story starts in Europe (specifically, in Germany, Greece, and Italy) and Japan. It then continues throughout the Korean War and the communist regime of Nicolae Ceauseacu, until present-day Russia and China. Next, I tell the story of receiving countries; I discuss the social, political, and economic conditions over recent decades that have caused countries to become receiving countries of international adoptees. In the third section of this Article, I explore why intercountry adoption policy and immigration policy should not be thought of as discrete and separate issues, but, instead, as different sides of the same coin, the development of which has and continues to stress the welfare of the nation and society as a whole. And, finally, I turn to the Hague Convention and explore where we are today in the context of the complicated and nuanced history of intercountry adoptio