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Abstract:
More than 20,000 white Americans go abroad each year to adopt children from other countries, the majority of whom are not white. At the same time, there are more African-American children available for adoption than there are African-American families seeking to adopt them. While Americans claim there are few healthy infants available for adoption in the United States, hundreds of African-American newborns each year are placed with white families in Canada and other countries. Tracing the history of transracial adoption in the United States, Professor Maldonado argues that one reason Americans go abroad to adopt is race. The racial hierarchy in the adoption market places white children at the top, African-American children at the bottom, and children of other races in between, thereby possibly rendering children from Asia or Latin America more desirable to adoptive parents than African-American children. Drawing on the rich literature on cognitive bias, Professor Maldonado debunks the myths about domestic and international adoptions and shows that racial preferences, even if unconscious, play a role in many Americans' decisions to adopt internationally. She proposes that the law discourage international adoptions based on racial preferences by requiring that Americans seeking to adopt internationally, while there are available children in the United States who meet their non raced based criteria, show non-race-based reasons for going abroad.

adoption, international, African-American, Black, race, racism, unconscious racism, cognitive bias, implicit bias, children, infants, babies, Asia, Latin America, Romania, Russia, Korea, Guatemala, racial hierarchy, transracial, interracial, Multi-Ethnic Placement Act, race matching

Abstract:
In recent years, scholars writing in the emerging law and emotion field have explored the role of emotions on criminal, administrative, securities, torts, employment, and constitutional law. Yet, surprisingly few scholars have examined their role in family law. Examining the role of emotion in family law is particularly important because the potential for harm resulting from negative emotions such as persistent anger and the desire for vengeance may be greater in the family law context. A divorced parent's anger towards the other parent can lead to excessive conflict for years after the legal relationship has ended, harming both parents and their children. The law and emotion literature has focused on negative emotions, such as anger, disgust, and vengefulness. However, to the extent that society would benefit from both a reduction in negative emotions and an increase in positive emotions, such as love, hope, and forgiveness, it is worthwhile to explore the law's ability to facilitate both. This Article explores the law's ability to cultivate forgiveness between divorcing parents.

Although legal scholars have not examined forgiveness in any depth, scholars in other fields have conducted numerous studies demonstrating its benefits, including a reduction in anger. Drawing from various forgiveness models, Professor Maldonado analyzes why and how the law should cultivate forgiveness between divorcing parents: first, by making marital misconduct irrelevant in divorce, property, alimony, and custody proceedings; and second, by requiring that high-conflict divorced parents participate in a forgiveness education program. She argues that these reforms, which she has named Healing Divorce, may significantly reduce inter-parental hostility and conflict. Demonstrating that lawmakers have already attempted to facilitate forgiveness in the criminal law context, she argues that the law can and should cultivate forgiveness after divorce.

inter-parental conflict, child custody, divorce, law and emotion, forgiveness, anger, vengeance, mediation

Abstract:
In this Article, Professor Maldonado examines the extensive empirical evidence of paternal disengagement and analyses the reasons close to one-third of noncustodial fathers have little or no contact with their children after divorce. Exploring current societal norms of post-divorce fatherhood, she concludes that the law's and society's treatment and expectations of divorced fathers may be facilitating their disengagement. Drawing on the rich scholarship on the law's effect on social norms of littering, recycling, sexual harassment, and marital commitment, among others, she argues that the law has the ability to trigger a social norm of involved fatherhood after divorce, thereby encouraging fathers to remain a part of their children's lives. She proposes that states adopt a presumption of joint legal custody AND require that nonresidential fathers participate in their children's upbringing. Relying on norm theorists' framework for determining how social norms arise, Professor Maldonado rejects legal enforcement of mandatory parenting rules in favor of informal external and internal sanctions. She argues that as a result of the law's expressive function, these legal reforms will signal to fathers and their communities that fatherhood is an important and expected responsibility, not an option, and that good parents nurture their children. In short time, communities would informally enforce paternal involvement rules by shaming those fathers who violate the norm. Further, these legal reforms might also have a self-sanctioning effect as many fathers would internalize the legal rule and experience guilt if they failed to participate in their children's upbringing because it would signify, both externally and internally, that they are bad parents. Thus, even absent external enforcement, fewer fathers would abandon their children after divorce.

Abstract:
This Article examines the effect of Troxel v. Granville on visitation disputes between parents and persons who have played a parental role to children not biologically or legally their own, persons the author refers to as "quasi-parents." Relying on psycho-sociological studies, the author compares the dominant model of a grandparent, the most frequent petitioners in visitation disputes, against the quasi-parental role assumed by grandparents in African-American, Latino, and other minority households to illustrate situations in which a quasi-parent may know as well as a parent what is in a child's best interest. Critiquing courts' deference to parents' decisions denying a quasi-parent visitation, the author develops a framework for resolving visitation disputes that protects parents' liberty interests in the care, custody, and control of their children while simultaneously protecting children's interests in maintaining relationships with quasi-parents. Demonstrating that parental deference is not based solely on biology, but on the emotional bond that the law presumes parents and children share, the author proposes that evidence of a quasi-parental relationship with a child rebut the presumption of validity granted to parents' decisions, thereby allowing a court to award visitation under the pre-Troxel best interests of the child standard.